Having an effective cyber incident response procedure is essential to ensure businesses remain resilient against malicious attacks. As the focus shifts more towards cloud and online operations, organisations must proactively identify potential risks before they can become a damaging data breach or other cybersecurity issues. But how can organisations make sure that their cyber incident response procedures are sufficient? Testing your organisation’s strategy for identifying, responding to, and mitigating incidents should be a key element of ensuring digital safety and security.
In this blog, we discuss best practices for testing your organisation's cyber incident response procedure so you can gain peace of mind knowing your organisation is better equipped to handle unexpected cybersecurity events.
1. Plan a tabletop exercise
When it comes to cyber incidents, it's not a matter of if, but when. That's why it's crucial to have a solid incident response procedure in place. But how do you ensure that it's effective? One way is to plan a tabletop exercise, which is an excellent way to evaluate how well your team can respond to a situation before it happens. During this exercise, your team will sit around a table, discussing their roles and responsibilities in a hypothetical scenario, such as a network breach or data loss. This exercise will help identify gaps in your cybersecurity plan and improve your team's response time, ultimately leading to a more robust and efficient incident response plan.
2. Conduct a technical exercise
Testing the efficacy of your cyber incident response procedure is crucial in keeping your system safe from any potential threats, and you can do so by conducting a technical drill. This drill involves simulating a realistic cyberattack to assess your team's preparedness. By doing so, you can identify weaknesses in your current response procedure and refine it accordingly. Regular drill exercises can also help your team become more familiar with the incident response process, shave off response time and ultimately minimise the potential impact of a cyberattack.
3. Perform a communication test
Testing your cyber incident response procedure is crucial in ensuring that your team is prepared should a security breach occur. A key aspect of this process is performing a communication test. This involves evaluating your team's ability to communicate effectively in the event of an incident. The test should include assessing the speed and accuracy with which alerts are generated, as well as how quickly and efficiently those alerts are relayed to the relevant parties. By carrying out this test, you can identify any weaknesses in your communication protocols and work to address them before an actual incident occurs.
4. Evaluate the team after the exercises
Once these exerciseshave been completed, it's essential to assess the team's performance. This evaluation allows you to identify potential weaknesses or areas for improvement within your response plan. By gathering feedback from all team members, you can identify any gaps in training or communication, and develop a plan to address them, ensuring that your organisation is better equipped to handle any cyber incident effectively. This will help you maintain the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your data, which is of utmost importance for any business in today's digital world.
5. Make updates to the plan
As cyber threats become more prevalent and sophisticated, companies need to have a well-defined incident response plan in place to address any potential security breaches. However, simply having a plan is not enough. It is equally important to test and update it regularly based on the results of your tests to ensure its continued effectiveness. You need to make sure the plan evolves with the current threat landscape. Failure to do so may leave your organisation vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Be ready when disaster strikes
Looking to develop a comprehensive cyber incident response plan that is tailored to your organisation's unique needs? Look no further than LRQA Nettitude. Committed to delivering the best cybersecurity propositions in the industry, we offer threat-led services that span technical assurance, consulting and managed detection, and response offerings. Reach out to our team today to learn more about how we can help protect your organisation from cyber threats.
