A proper incident response plan can lower the financial impact of an attack by giving you and your employees the correct guidance in the event of an attack.
When a worker is physically injured on the job, there should always be an incident response plan set in place. The same is also true when responding to a cyber attack. A proper incident response plan can lower the financial impact of an attack by giving you and your employees the correct guidance in the event of an attack. With the recent Coronavirus pandemic, many companies have shifted all of their work to remote. This has created a new set of uncertainty regarding data security for individual employees. Read on to learn five of the most critical steps regarding incident response for cyber attacks.
Assign Defined Responsibilities
Begin with who should oversee the conception of the incident response plan. Whether it’s the CIO or somebody else, they’re going to have to inform all the relevant stakeholders, gather input, and assign different roles. You might also need the participation of senior management, human resources, regulatory bodies, law enforcement, and cyber consultants. There are plenty of moving parts to coordinate if you want to ensure that incidents are dealt with swiftly.
Define Your Risk Tolerance
There is no one size fits all answer for this, you must work out what is critical data, which key functionality your company requires to do business, and prioritize your efforts to focus them in the proper places. In the wake of a possible cyberattack, there is almost always downtime. Consider the cost of being down for a day a triple it.
Classify Events
Once an incident develops, you need to be able to classify it correctly so that you know exactly which action to take. Some categories to consider are data loss, disk failure, malware, and ransomware. Classifying these risks allows you to prioritize them, but each incident should be fully documented to you’ve got a basis for investigation and audit should it be needed in the future.
Set Instructions
With a proper system in place to uncover and classify different incidents, you can set clear procedures that enumerate in detail what each person involved in an incident should do. This begins with the rules on reporting but includes everything from fixed time scales for an investigation to the required steps to remediate the issue. Having clear procedures in place removes the room for doubt or horrible decision making.
Prioritize Eradication and Recovery
As a part of working out your risk tolerance, you have identified critical systems. These systems that enable your business to run should be fully backed up, so you can reach them and get them up and running swiftly again. For the the other business functions, you must perform a type of triage to work out the proper order for eradication and recovery.
For any help regarding protection for your business network in case of a cyber attack, give En-Net Services a call today.
En-Net Services Can Help Today
Experience a superior method of getting the public sector technology solutions you need through forming a partnership with En-Net Services. Our seasoned team members are familiar with the distinct purchasing and procurement cycles of state and local governments, as well as Federal, K-12 education, and higher education entities. En-Net is a certified Maryland Small Business Reserve with contract vehicles and sub-contracting partnerships to meet all contracting requirements.
To find out more about our hardware services, printing, and imaging services, or to hear more about how a dynamic team can help meet your information technology needs, send us an email or give us a call at (301)-846-9901 today!