Guidelines for an Effective Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan

Organizations with a cybersecurity incident response plan experience a lower average cost (by $2.46M) per data breach than those with no incident response capabilities, according to an IBM study. As cybersecurity incidents are common, incident response plans help organizations identify, contain, and remediate breaches more effectively in the future. A comprehensive incident response plan helps businesses react faster to cyberattacks through the coordination of policies, procedures and people across all aspects of the organization. The plan should align all personnel in a clear and consistent fashion to mitigate costs as quickly and efficiently as possible. A properly created and maintained cybersecurity incident response plan recognizes that the proactive tasks are as important as the postincident activities. In the following pages, we'll present an overview of the most common cybersecurity incident response plan steps and best practices on what to include in each section.