Tips for Effective Cybersecurity Incident Crisis Management

Preparing for a cyber crisis can help an organization limit the damage and mitigate future incidents. Adequate preparation can include determining what constitutes a crisis for your company, creating a communication plan, and conducting tabletop exercises.

These activities will help your team gain practical experience responding to cyberattacks and improve their ability to deal with real-world incidents. This is an essential step in reducing the impact of a cyber incident.

Identify the Threat

Cyber attacks can damage a company’s reputation, cost millions, and destroy its business. They’re one of the most significant risks a business can face.

The key is to detect an attack before it’s too late. You can do this by identifying precursors and indicators, says Montenegro. For example, you may notice many failed login attempts and realize a hacker is trying to break into your system (a precursor). Or you might discover a malware infection after an employee clicks on a malicious link (an indicator).

Another way to mitigate risk is by hardening privileged access to your network. For example, a commercial password vault solution can help you secure passwords for administrative accounts on critical IT systems. Moreover, you should train your cybersecurity team to respond to an incident. Regular attack simulations or tabletop exercises will give your team practical experience and strengthen their skills. For instance, you can teach them how to identify the source of an attack, analyze malware samples, and conduct forensics.

Create a Contingency Plan

Organizations need a contingency plan to mitigate potential damage that details how to react to a cyber incident. This can help protect data, employees, and customers and ensure business continuity.

Start by assembling an expert team of individuals from different departments and possibly bringing in outside consultants like an Ed Batts Corporate law attorney to identify possible threats and their dangers. These risks should be prioritized by their likelihood to occur and impact on the business.

Once the team has created a list of potential risks, they can make contingency plans to address each. The most likely scenarios should be covered first, but including less likely risk events in the contingency plan is also essential.

The team should also have crisis communication templates ready to use that they can deploy based on the severity of the incident. This includes distributing information to critical stakeholders like media and clients. Having these prepared ahead of time can save valuable time in the event of a breach.

Gather Information

The first step in a cyber crisis is to gather all the information about the incident. You need to know what triggered the problem (i.e., loss of confidential data and adverse financial or reputation consequences for the company, its customers, or partners). This will help determine how much damage has been caused.

Once you have the facts, you must decide what to communicate. Depending on the severity of the incident, you may need to issue public statements. You should also have a set of templates for different scenarios so you can react quickly.

It would help if you communicated clearly and regularly with your stakeholders during a cybersecurity crisis. If you don’t, you could risk destroying necessary evidence and worsening the situation. Keeping up-to-date communication channels will help to reassure your audience and build trust.

Communicate

A crisis communication plan and playbooks ensure employees are prepared to communicate with stakeholders during a cyber attack. This also reduces the likelihood of miscommunications, which can contribute to additional damage during a crisis.

Once the team has identified potential threats and developed playbooks, they should practice them at least once a year by running a tabletop exercise with the security team. This will allow them to see how well their plans work and identify any gaps in the system.

Communicating with stakeholders is a crucial aspect of crisis management, as it helps to control the narrative and reassure victims and other affected parties that the company is working to resolve the issue. As a result, the designated spokesperson and SLT must be trained to provide regular updates to the media and other stakeholders. These updates should be brief and free of technical jargon. The business will regain the trust of its stakeholders by keeping everyone up to date.