Not just for emergencies; how a Cyber Incident Response Playbook can help you and your organisation
There are two simple ways to explain a cyber incident response playbook. Playbooks can be a checklist of actions, or an incident response playbook can be described as a bridge between policy and a detailed procedure.
We are going to cover the following topics in this blog:
- What is an incident response playbook?
- Why do you need a cyber incident response playbook?
- How do you go about creating these playbooks?
What is an Incident Response Playbook?
At its most basic, a playbook is a checklist of actions. Don’t underestimate the power of a complete and professional playbook or checklist. Pilots have averted major air disasters as a result of a clear and detailed checklist of actions to take during an emergency. Nurses and frontline health staff regularly save lives by following structured playbooks of carefully designed actions for various emergency situations.
The idea is that by rehearsing the steps in a playbook over and over again, they become a part of the pilot or the healthcare worker’s muscle memory. Therefore, in a crisis situation, the person in-charge responds to the chaos almost instinctively. This is the main reason why the aviation and healthcare industries rely heavily on playbooks. Any business, in fact, that is committed to managing a crisis well, should have a playbook especially for cyber incidents.
Are Playbooks only for Emergencies?
No. Playbooks or checklists can be used for many different circumstances other than emergencies such as preparing for a crisis, onboarding an employee, sending out special communications to all staff and more.
When it comes to responding to an incident, the cyber incident response playbook should spell out what exactly a team or teams need to do when a particular critical asset is under attack.
A good cyber incident response playbook is crisp and to-the-point and it should also be aligned with global standards such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), NIST SP 800-61.r2, ISO 27001:2013 and PCI-DSS.
Why do you need Cyber Incident Response Playbooks?
Responding to any incident or crisis can be a challenge, especially when under duress. For a cyber crisis, add the complexities of a cyber-attack, the surreptitious nature of cyber criminals who are masters of staying invisible and the ability of digital damage that can stay undetected for weeks, if not months.
Further, by the time the organisation becomes aware that it has been compromised, it is often too late. Cyber criminals have already gained unauthorized access, precious data has been stolen, rumours abound in the media and customers are usually up in arms about their sensitive information being in the wrong hands.
Therefore, the only real security measure a business can put into place is to be ready to respond to a cyber-attack effectively when it does occur. This, in addition to the regular protection measures.
The business needs to act with agility and precision - something that is only possible with a solid, tested incident response playbook at hand.
The playbook should:
- Focus on the critical asset, followed by one or more specific threats to the asset.
- Have reliable technology triggers that ‘invoke’ the playbook.
- Include aspects like who will authorize responses, how to quarantine the attack, who will handle the media etc.
- Be aware and ensure that the organisation meets any regulatory requirements in case of a cyber incident or attack.
By now, it’s probably clear to you what an incident response playbook is and why it’s essential to have one. So, how do you create an incident response playbook that adequately protects your business from cyber threats? A good Cyber Incident Response Playbooks training course is a good place to start.
An effective playbooks training course should teach you how to create basic to advanced incident response playbooks, depending on the nature of your business. It should also help you optimise your existing playbooks.
With this knowledge, you should be able to create a playbook that adequately protects your business from the damaging consequences of a data breach or cyber-attack. To really take your cyber incident response capabilities to the next level, you can also choose to test the efficacy of your incident response playbooks with cyber crisis tabletop workshops.
These workshops evaluate how helpful your playbooks really are in a simulated cyber-attack environment. You can then work on further streamlining the playbooks so they enhance your cyber resilience posture.
Follow the link to know more about Cyber Management Alliance’s NCSC-Certified Building and Optimising Incident Response Playbooks training course.
About Cyber Management Alliance
Founded in 2015 and headquartered in London UK, Cyber Management Alliance Ltd. is a recognized, independent world leader in Cyber Incident & Crisis Management consultancy and training. The organisation is renowned globally as the creator of the flagship Cyber Incident Planning and Response course certified as part of the UK Government’s National Cyber Security Centre Certified Training Scheme.
Cyber Management Alliance has serviced over 300 enterprise clients in multiple verticals including government, banking, finance, IT, consultancies, healthcare, oil and gas and retail across 38 countries. It has established its leadership by assessing, building and improving its clients’ Cyber Incident and Crisis Management capabilities through training, tabletop exercises, health checks and audits.
