Has anything been more disruptive to business cybersecurity than AI’s entry into the mix? Its meteoric rise has meant that criminals possess increasingly powerful and effective tools with which to launch attacks—and businesses are prime targets. Mastering incident response is urgent, especially for business owners who would prefer to avoid the chaos that cybercriminals intend.
What Is an Incident Response Plan?
Your business’s incident response plan defines the steps your company must take during a security incident.
This set of rules lays out your business’s response to specific types of incidents, covering key points like:
- Defining roles and responsibilities for team members
- Security Education
- Escalation processes for various types of data
Ideally, incident response forms the first part of your company’s disaster recovery plan, as it identifies and contains the incident.
How a Robust Response Strategy Benefits Your Business
Mastering incident response means allocating resources. That way, your company can limit the impact of a cyber event. You’ll also claim the following benefits:
Mitigate Data and Productivity Damage
Cyber attacks and data breaches can devastate your company, but a well-planned response will reduce the damage. Cybersecurity incidents tank your company’s productivity for anywhere from a few hours to days or weeks, resulting in massive work backlogs, lost sales, and other losses.
Improve Regulatory Compliance
Federal laws govern how companies deal with security breaches, particularly regarding the exposure of protected data. When you put time into mastering incident response, there’s a greater likelihood that your company will comply with the regulations. You’ll better grasp data classification, reporting standards, and the ability to provide more information about the next steps.
Preserve Your Company’s Standing
If you don’t respond quickly and appropriately to a security breach, your company's reputation can be torn down, creating a public relations nightmare.
Contain Costs
IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach report estimates that the U.S. implication is under $9.5 million. A plan for immediate response can reduce those costs, protecting your company’s bottom line.
The Key Elements of Effective Incident Response
Mastering incident response requires developing specific strategies to deal with different types of incidents, including:
- Malware and ransomware
- Phishing attacks
- DDoS attacks
- Insider threats
Even if your company has limited resources, you must protect business-critical data. Identifying and securing all potential attack points ensures your business can take the right action at the right time when things go wrong. Be ready to address incidents with ongoing employee education and training, state-of-the-art security tools, and regular testing of your response procedures.
