How to Build an Effective Incident Response Plan: A Practical Guide

Creating a robust Incident Response Plan (IRP) is essential for businesses navigating today’s cyber-threat terrain.

This guide will walk you through how to build an IRP that not only responds to incidents but also protects your company from future threats. 

With security incidents on the rise, having a well-defined, actionable plan is crucial to minimizing damage and maintaining business continuity.

Why you need an incident response plan

Security incidents have the potential to bring an organization to a grinding halt. Imagine your entire network going down due to ransomware, or worse, a sensitive data breach that requires you to notify customers and regulatory bodies.

Without an incident response plan in place, your team may scramble to respond, which could delay recovery and amplify the damage.

An IRP provides a structured approach for responding to incidents, allowing you to:

1. Quickly contain and resolve security breaches to prevent further damage.
2. Mitigate the impact on business operations and customer trust.
3. Maintain regulatory compliance, avoiding penalties from data protection authorities.
4. Streamline communication with internal teams and external entities like customers, partners, and regulators.
5. Prepare your team to handle incidents efficiently, reducing the risk of panic or confusion.

At its core, an Incident Response Plan is about preserving confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information systems and data.

The plan applies to all employees, contractors, and vendors, and ensures that every incident is handled in a consistent, effective way.

When to activate your incident response plan

The IRP isn’t something you activate lightly—it’s there for moments when security events could impact the core functions of your business.

Here are the key scenarios that should trigger the IRP:

• Incident Detection: When your security team or a third-party Managed Detection and Response (MDR) provider confirms an abnormal event, such as a data breach or unauthorized access.
• Employee Reporting: Employees play a vital role in identifying incidents. Once an employee notices unusual activity or a potential breach, they should report it immediately, triggering the IRP.
• Executive Decision: Sometimes, incidents don’t immediately trigger alarms but may require activation of the IRP if senior leadership sees potential long-term risks, such as reputational damage or legal consequences.
• Compliance Risks: Failing to respond swiftly to incidents could lead to violations of data protection laws and regulations such as GDPR, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and others. Activating the IRP in these scenarios ensures that you remain compliant.
• Business Disruption: Any event that threatens to disrupt your critical business functions, whether it’s a denial-of-service attack or system downtime, should immediately activate the IRP.

By establishing clear triggers for IRP activation, you ensure a swift response, which can drastically reduce the impact of incidents.

Incident response team (IRT)

Having a dedicated Incident Response Team (IRT) is the backbone of any effective IRP. This team is responsible for managing the incident from start to finish, coordinating with other departments, and ensuring that the organization recovers swiftly.

Here’s an overview of the key roles within the IRT:

• Incident Response Officer: The leader of the IRT, responsible for overall strategy and reporting to the CEO. This executive-level role ensures that the incident response is aligned with broader business goals.
• Incident Response Lead: This individual coordinates the IRT’s efforts and manages all phases of the response, from detection to remediation. They ensure the response process is running smoothly and report directly to the Incident Response Officer.
• IT Operations: This team handles the technical side of the response, such as applying patches, restoring affected systems, and ensuring system stability after the incident.
• Communications/PR Team: Managing both internal and external communication, this team ensures that stakeholders are kept informed and that media relations are handled carefully to protect the organization’s reputation.
• Human Resources: HR plays a critical role in incident response by managing personnel issues, including training and potential disciplinary actions, as well as ensuring the proper handling of incidents involving employee data or breaches of HR systems.
• MDR Vendor: If you work with an MDR vendor, they provide 24/7 monitoring and alerting, detecting threats before they escalate. The vendor also plays a crucial role in threat hunting, investigation, and forensic analysis.

Clearly defining these roles ensures that your team knows exactly what to do during an incident, avoiding confusion and ensuring a coordinated response.

Incident response process: Step-by-step breakdown

A solid IRP doesn’t just stop at identifying the key players. You need to have a clear, step-by-step process to ensure that every incident is handled smoothly, efficiently, and consistently.

1. Preparation: Equip and train

Preparation is about getting your team ready before an incident even occurs. Start by establishing your Incident Response Team and ensuring they have access to the right tools and resources. This also means running regular training sessions and simulations (e.g., tabletop exercises) to keep the team sharp.

Documentation is critical at this stage. Every step of the response process should be documented, along with detailed runbooks for specific types of incidents (e.g., ransomware, phishing). Having these documents ready to go ensures that your team can follow a predetermined process rather than trying to make decisions on the fly.

2. Detection: Identifying the threat

The quicker you can detect a threat, the faster you can respond. Your security tools, such as SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), continuously monitor for unusual activities, generating alerts when something abnormal occurs.

Once an alert is generated, the MDR vendor or in-house security team investigates to determine whether the activity is benign or a genuine security incident.

Swift identification can mean the difference between containing a threat and suffering a costly breach.

3. Containment: Limiting the damage

Once an incident is confirmed, the IRT moves to contain it. This might mean disconnecting affected systems from the network or isolating compromised applications. The goal here is to stop the spread of malicious activity while the team investigates the full scope of the incident.

It’s critical during this phase to have clear communication with all departments. Everyone needs to understand their role in minimizing the impact and preventing the issue from escalating.

4. Eradication: Eliminating the threat

After containment, the next step is to eliminate the root cause of the incident. This might involve removing malware, patching vulnerabilities, or disabling compromised user accounts. Whatever the threat, the goal is to eradicate it, ensuring there’s no chance of it re-emerging later.

The IT team will often work closely with security vendors during this phase to ensure all vulnerabilities are addressed.

5. Recovery: Restoring normal operations

With the threat eradicated, it’s time to bring your systems back online. However, recovery isn’t just about turning the power back on—it’s a methodical process that involves restoring systems from secure backups, testing them for integrity, and ensuring everything functions correctly.

Recovery must be monitored closely to ensure that no malicious remnants remain. This is also a time to increase vigilance, as attackers sometimes attempt follow-up attacks once systems are restored.

Continuous monitoring: Key element

Security isn’t a one-time task, and that’s where continuous monitoring comes in. With the rise of sophisticated cyber threats, continuous monitoring allows your team to detect threats in real-time and respond swiftly before they can cause major damage.

Working with an MDR provider ensures your organization has 24/7 threat monitoring, proactive threat hunting, and ongoing dark web monitoring to detect signs of data exposure or compromised credentials.

This continuous monitoring not only helps catch threats before they escalate but also ensures you remain compliant with data protection laws and standards.

Post-incident communication

Once an incident occurs, communication becomes critical. Your organization needs to have a plan in place to communicate both internally and externally. This includes notifying stakeholders like customers, partners, and regulators about the incident’s impact.

• Internal Communication: Ensure all employees are aware of the incident, its potential impact, and any required actions. Regular updates from the IRT will help maintain transparency and keep staff informed.
• External Communication: Be sure to notify affected customers and partners promptly, especially if the incident involves compromised data. Clear communication here helps to maintain trust and ensures compliance with legal obligations.

Learning from incidents: Continuous improvement

An often-overlooked part of incident response is learning from what happened. After the incident is resolved, hold a post-incident review to identify what went right, what went wrong, and how you can improve in the future. The lessons learned should be documented and incorporated into your updated Incident Response Plan.

Additionally, consider conducting post-incident training based on what was learned. This helps ensure that your team is better prepared for future incidents.

MDR by Under Defense: Your Always-On Security Partner

UnderDefense’s MDR solution fits your budget and gives you confidence in your organization’s security posture. Here’s how it can help you overcome common challenges:

• Immediate, personalized support: 24/7 access to dedicated SOC analysts who know your business and get back to you fast.
• Comprehensive attack detection: Beyond 24/7 monitoring, we detect threats proactively providing context and remediation advice.
• Tooling optimization: We tune your security tools to reduce alert noise by 82% and integrate with all your existing tools for a single pane of glass.
• Customer ownership: You own all fine-tuned tools and processes at the end of the contract so you have control and value.
• Operational transparency: Full visibility into alert timelines, threat context, and regular reports.
• Guaranteed SLA: We offer Service Level Agreements, with financial backing through Cyber Insurance if required.

Conclusion: Be prepared, not surprised

In a world where cyber threats are constant, having a well-defined Incident Response Plan is essential for every organization.

By establishing clear roles, processes, and communication channels, you’ll be better equipped to respond to incidents, minimize damage, and recover swiftly.

Don’t wait for an incident to occur—start building and refining your IRP today, and ensure your team is always prepared for the unexpected.