Incident Response Strategies: Understanding the Different Phases

Incident response is a critical component of any organization’s security strategy. It encompasses a set of policies and procedures that are put in place to identify, contain, and eliminate cyber-attacks. The goal is to quickly identify the root cause of the attack and prevent it from causing further damage, minimize the impact, and prevent any future attacks.

The incident response process involves several phases, each of which is essential to the overall success of the strategy. These phases include preparation, identification, containment, eradication, and recovery.

Let us know in detail about the various phases of incident response.

• Preparation: This phase involves training the employees within an organization about the various security measures they need to take while accessing sensitive data. It is necessary for organizations to have proper planning to secure the data and various systems.
  A systematic review of the various security implementations should be conducted regularly to evaluate the incident response plan.
  It is necessary to check the availability of the various resources needed to implement an incident response plan including hardware and software resources. The incident response plan includes proper training and execution of the security procedures.
  Ensure employees within the organization have awareness of the possible threats a system can have and what are the best practices to avoid such risks.
• Identification: This phase of incident response involves identifying whether a breach occurred within the network. If actually a breach is detected, then the primary cause of the breach should be analyzed. The system that has been compromised should be identified and the extent to which the system has been compromised should also be analysed.
  It should be identified whether the breach is affecting the operations. The source of the event must be discovered to stop further damage to the systems.
• Containment: Organizations often try to delete the breach upon its identification. This may sometimes lead to destroying crucial information causing major damage in the long run.
  Hence it is advised that the breach should first be contained to stop it from further spreading. Identify the devices that are affected by it and disconnect them from the network. Analyze the amount of damage caused and start implementing strategies to overcome the situation. Having a long-term and short-term containment strategy to handle the procedure is essential to restore business operations.
  In case the system updates are not done it is advised to update and patch them to remove any malware. After the updates changing the passwords with stronger ones and rechecking the administrative credentials keeps the systems safe for future use.
• Eradication: After identifying the cause of the breach and containing it from causing further damage it is necessary to remove it from the systems. The process of eradication involves removal of malware and rectifying security issues. It is essential to detect if any malware is still present in the systems as it may lead to data loss.
  After ensuring that malware is completely removed from the system it should be updated, hardened, and patches applied.
• Recovery: However fast the containment is implemented there is some loss of data and damage caused to the systems during a breach. It is, therefore, necessary to implement the restoring the affected systems and devices for quick resuming of the business services.
  Installing tools that will ensure safety from such attacks is necessary. Implementing a robust backup and recovery system also helps in restoring the systems.
• Lessons Learned: After restoring the systems and following the safety precautions it is necessary to hold a reliable incident response action policy with all the members of the team. The team should discuss what the actual cause of the breach was and how it could have been averted. Rectify the loopholes in the incident response plan and identify the strong points that worked in favor. This analysis will help businesses to strengthen the network system from future attacks.

Conclusion:

Incident Response system is a necessary plan of action that every organization needs to follow for keeping their systems safe from possible breaches.

Implementing a reliable Incident Response plan relying on a third-party organization helps in making the whole process a hassle-free procedure. The engineers with the organization have years of experience in handling such difficult situations and have in-depth knowledge of rectifying the issue with minimum possible damage caused to systems.

We at Prutech offer a robust and well-planned Incident Response system that has helped several organizations to get back to business with less downtime and less amount of data loss.

With PruTech by your side, you can rest assured that your business is in safe hands. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you protect your business from cyber threats.

To learn more, contact us Contact 24/7 – PruTech (prutechindia.com).