Security teams are often overwhelmed with alerts daily, including false positives, and actions that require attention but might be placed on the back burner. But when alerts start stacking up and aren’t addressed promptly, important security concerns might go unnoticed and these can spiral into a data breach. The time to detect and respond to security incidents should be as short as possible to limit the time an attacker can carry out an attack.

In the first blog of our two-part incident response series, we explained how your organization can jump-start its incident response. In this second part, we’ll focus on the essential elements of an incident response plan—a critical factor for any company trying to recover from an incident quickly and confidently.

The FBI published their 2021 Internet Crime Report with data from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). This report shows that Business Email Compromise (BEC) / Email Account Compromise (EAC) attacks far exceed the volume and losses of Ransomware attacks. Organizations need to be prepared and know who they are going to call when they experience BEC/EAC, as well as ransomware, or other high-severity incidents.

Egnyte’s recent independent cybersecurity study found that only 64% of organizations had incident response plans. Without such plans, companies are extremely susceptible to potential cyber-attacks, and the stark business reality is that they take much longer to recover. Unfortunately, there are daily examples of major data breaches where a particular company’s incident response could have been managed more effectively.

Each quarter, Tetra Defense, an Arctic Wolf company, collects and analyzes data and insights from its incident response engagements in the United States. These statistics are a vital part of assessing the cyber threat landscape at large and are intended to guide underwriting strategies, loss prevention programs, broker advisement, and client security priorities.

When it comes to cybersecurity, organizations need to be well-prepared for what comes next. Not only are cybercriminals leveraging ever more advanced technology, but the cost of a breach — in terms of cost, reputation, and damage — is on the rise. Mitigating risk requires having a robust incident response plan in place and dedicated team members on standby. Let’s take a closer look.

As cybercrimes and security breaches become more sophisticated, data protection strategies have become more important to business survival. A critical element in an organization’s ability to effectively handle these incidents is to reduce downtime and minimize damage. This is where an effective incident response and disaster recovery plan comes into play.

The Center for Internet Security (CIS) offers Critical Security Controls (CSCs) that help organizations improve cybersecurity. CIS CSC 17 covers incident response and management. (In earlier versions of the CIS controls, handling of security incidents was covered in Control 19.) CIS CSC 17 focuses on how to develop a plan for responding to attacks and other security incidents, including the importance of defining clear roles for those responsible for the various tasks involved.