Have an Incident Response Plan

An incident response plan is a documented strategy for managing security breaches. A cybersecurity incident response plan should include team structure, roles, communication protocols, and a clear approach to preparing, identifying, containing, eradicating, and recovering from incidents.

CyberSecure Canada Section 5.1.2.1 incident response plan mandates that organizations document procedures for handling different types of incidents across varying severities. It also explicitly requires a plan for how to proceed if the organization is unable to manage an incident internally.

Incident response severity levels and classification should be based on the scope of impact and the criticality of affected systems. For example, a critical incident involves widespread disruption or data exfiltration, whereas a low severity incident might be an isolated phishing attempt.

Security incident response roles and responsibilities involve a senior leader overseeing the response, technical staff handling containment and recovery, and designated individuals managing communications and legal obligations. They work together through the preparation, identification, containment, eradication, and recovery phases.

The plan must outline third-party incident response support when internal team cannot manage an event. Organizations must establish relationships with external experts, such as managed security service providers or specialized incident response firms, before an incident occurs.

External services should be invoked during critical or high-severity events like wide-scale ransomware attacks, significant data breaches, or whenever the internal team lacks the necessary digital forensics capacity or 24/7 operational capability.

Organizations should test their plans at least annually. Incident response plan tabletop exercise testing ensures that the response team is familiar with procedures, communication channels are effective, and gaps in the strategy are identified and fixed.

Common ransomware incident response plan steps include immediately isolating the infected systems from the network, identifying the root cause, eradicating the malicious code, and securely restoring systems from immutable, uncompromised backups.

An incident response escalation process and communication plan must detail exactly who to notify internally, such as executives, and externally, such as breach counsel and regulators. It should also specify out-of-band communication methods in case primary corporate networks are disabled.

Yes, while the overarching framework remains the same, an effective plan includes specific playbooks for various incident types. The technical containment and eradication steps for a data breach differ significantly from those for a denial-of-service outage or a malware infection.

Incident response plans often become outdated as teams, vendors, and systems change. Tools like WatchDog Security's Policy Management help by providing version control, review/approval workflows, and acceptance tracking so you can prove the plan was maintained, communicated, and acknowledged by the right stakeholders.

Plans that rely on outside help can fail if vendors, contacts, or service levels are unclear during a crisis. Tools like WatchDog Security's Vendor Risk Management and Risk Register help document third-party response providers, define escalation triggers, track response-related risks (e.g., lack of 24/7 coverage), and maintain treatment plans tied to severity levels.