Organizations of all verticals, and of all sizes, are prone to security incidents. The most important fact to remember when such an incident occurs is that it can be dealt with effectively and efficiently if the proper steps and best practices are adhered to. This article will discuss some of the best practices for dealing with security incidents.

What is it?

Security incident management (SIM) encompasses the overall lifecycle and related processes designed to reduce the impact of security incidents on an organization. The SIM itself is an ongoing process; however, the processes and activities can be logically categorized into phases. The phases are:

1. Detection and analysis
2. Containment
3. Eradication
4. Recovery
5. Lessons learned/after-action review.

Why is it important?

The importance of SIM has only increased as attackers have become more aggressive and skilled at causing chaos in enterprise and consumer circles. Businesses need to have an organized approach to SIM as they become more reliant on technology. SIM allows enterprises to ensure that they can protect their core business data while maintaining critical functions.

What are the main problems organizations face?

Security incident management can be complex, and therefore people experience some common pitfalls. One of the main problems is insufficient planning and preparations for the inevitable. Many other issues boil down to a couple of critical problems such as: lack of trained staff and budgets, slow response times in the various phases, an underestimation of risk, and simple human error.

Best practices for Security Incident Management

Following sound principles and best practices are essential when responding to a security incident. Here are five steps you can follow to properly manage security incidents in your company:

Keep it simple:

Don’t try to create overly complex plans, which might be impractical and difficult to follow-though. Instead, focus on having an actionable and straightforward plan that covers what matters most.

Learn from past incidents:

Reviewing past incidents and learning from internal and external mistakes as well as success stories will go a long way toward helping you improve on your incident response plans.

Monitor your workflow:

Once you have a plan in place, monitor its effectiveness and tweak it as needed based on real-world results.

Plan your incident response and recovery strategies:

Figure out what type of recovery approach makes sense for your business—and then incorporate them into your incident response tests.

Test your incident response plans and recovery strategies:

If you haven’t already done so, conduct periodic tests of your incident response plan to see how well it works in real life.

Summary

Security incidents can occur at any time, but organizations with effective plans and strategies can make a big difference in how quickly they handle and respond to them. Organizations cannot prevent incidents from happening, but with proper planning and preparation they can reduce the impact to the organization and recovery within acceptable time frames.