Every day, there are more and more cybersecurity incidents in the news affecting every industry. When you hear about these devastating attacks, you may wonder what you would do if your business fell victim to a cyberattack.
Luckily, as more attacks happen, experts develop new incident response processes to investigate, handle, and mitigate the risk of future attacks.
To help you prepare, here is your guide to the key players in an incident response plan, cyber security best practices, and how to find resources to help.
Key Players in Your Cyber Incident Response Checklist
A typical security incident response plan template for small businesses should include a variety of expert resources and security incident response tools. If your business falls victim to a breach, any number of consequences could result, including:
- Hackers could leak your clients' personal information to the dark web
- Your vendors could also suffer data breaches
- Cybercriminals could leak trade secrets or client lists to your competition
- Lawsuits, ransomware payments, and government fines could cost you millions
To mitigate these risks, you'll need help from the best incident response companies with the experience to handle cybercriminals and recover data.
1.Identify & Define Your Internal Incident Response Leadership Team
This is a crucial step to take before you suffer a cyber attack. Define who will lead the team in making decisions, liaising with experts, and determining an action plan in the event of an attack.
Most often, this will include C-suite executive leadership, your IT team, and other high-level leaders in your organization. This internal team will come together to manage and assist outside experts in their investigation and support.
2.Cyber Insurance Providers
The second most crucial players that determine your incident response capabilities include cyber insurance providers. Cyber policies can assist with the costs associated with cyberattacks, with policy structures often including:
- Cyber coverage - breach response, business loss, and liability insurance
- Crime coverage
- Policyholder pre-claim planning
Please note that all policies and coverage inclusions will look different and vary depending on the provider, your existing protections, and more.
Cyber insurers will often offer extensive resources for risk mitigation and a select list of experts or vendors to contact in the event of an attack. Some of these vendors might include:
- Computer forensics services
- Loss mitigation services
- Cyber extortion and ransomware negotiation support
3.Digital Forensics Specialists
Digital forensics specialists can help you uncover how a data breach occurred, the affected systems, and the damage hackers have already done or could do. This includes finding out exactly what data has been compromised, and the affected people be informed of the breach.
These professionals are well-versed in many types of incidents, so they are a great resource for investigating cyber security events.
Most of the time, cyber attackers are inside your system for up to 100 days before they make themselves known. This makes forensics a crucial aspect of understanding the severity of the breach.
4.Cyber Extortion/Ransomware Negotiators
Ransomeware attackers will likely threaten to destroy or publicly release sensitive data if you fail to pay specified amounts. The situation becomes more dire when they increase ransomware demands the longer you wait to respond.
This is where ransomware negotiation comes in. Reasoning with cyber criminals can seem like a long shot. However, businesses have been able to successfully reduce ransomware amounts through strategic negotiation.
Keep in mind, your priority should be to recover data with paying ransoms as last resort. It's also worth noting that paying ransoms can contribute to foreign crime networks, encourage hackers, and even violate national sanctions.
To read more about the ins and outs of ransomware negotiation, read our article: To Pay or Not to Pay: How to Handle Ransomware Negotiation.
5.Your Legal Support Team
As more businesses fall victim to data breaches, new laws are created to mandate how businesses handle cybersecurity. For example, the NY SHIELD Act enacted mandates for administrative, technical, and physical cybersecurity protections.
This makes your legal support team critical if you fall victim to an attack. Depending on the size and scope of the damage done, investigators will come looking for answers on what protections failed and who is responsible for the breach.
In the event of an attack, legal support can help your business manage:
- Regulatory fines/penalties/damages
- Private right to action
- Class action lawsuits
- Remediation costs
6.Public Relations & Your Incident Response Communication Plan
Individual notification services are essential for helping affected clients or vendors in the case of a data breach. You must notify affected parties in a timely manner, and governments are cracking down on timely notification.
Timing is crucial when your client's or vendor's information is in jeopardy. This is why you must inform victims about any possible breaches, and steps to protect their sensitive information.
TransUnion is a highly recommended individual notification service to help victims protect their credit and mitigate the risk of identity theft. Credit freezes and fraud alerts are very effective tools in identity theft protection. They can be placed through TransUnion and other credit bureaus.
Goals and Best Practices in Cyber Incident Response
Ultimately, security incident response service providers share your goals in recovering your lost data and reducing the financial impact on your business.
According to the 2023 IBM Security Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average cost of a cyber breach is around $4.45 million. However, you can take steps today to mitigate the risk of a devastating attack.
Some best practices in cyber attack preparation include:
- Plan calls with vendors to get to know your response team
- Identify roles and responsibilities internally
- Do tabletop exercises to identify how you would handle different scenarios
- Set up strong data backups and ensure there are protections to keep hackers from compromising them in an attack
What is the Most Important Part of an Incident Response Plan?
The most important aspect of a response plan is taking steps to mitigate risk before you become a victim. For example, secure data backups are great tools to recover data and mitigate the need to pay ransomware.
By far, the most important players in your incident response playbook are your internal team members. Ensure you train leadership on incident response scenarios and tabletop exercises so they know how to react in the event of an attack.
Additionally, your internal staff are key to preventing the spread of malware by exercising good cybersecurity practices. Conduct regular, consumable cybersecurity training to educate staff on common cyber scams, malware, social engineering, and more.
To read more about how to educate staff on cybersecurity, read our articles:
- SLAM Dunk Your Email Security with These 4 Rules to Live By (usherwood.com)
- Top 6 Email Security Tips for Employees (usherwood.com)
How to Find the Best Managed Security Services Providers (MSSPs)
Cyber incident response companies are only one piece to the puzzle. Although cyber attack response planning is crucial, it's best to prioritize cyber risk reduction in any way you can. Managed service providers (MSPs) offer a wide range of services in cybersecurity, data protection, staff training, and more.
If you're interested in setting your business up to be productive and secure, click the button below to speak to an expert about a network assessment.
