How To Create A Cybersecurity Playbook
All organizations have plans for different incidents that could impact the business’s resilience to them if they are not prepared. The purpose of a security playbook is to provide all members of an organization with a clear understanding of their responsibilities towards cybersecurity standards and accepted practices before, during, and after a security incident.
Once the incident response team is defined and aware of their position, key action steps of a cyber security incident need to be put in place. These include:
- Incident detection
- Response actions
- Communication
There is no “one-size” fits all approaches to a cybersecurity playbook. Before defining the strategy that is right for your organization, you must have a clear understanding of what data is most important to protect.
The incident response team needs to be put in place prior to an incident occurring. Various levels of personnel and departments need to be involved to ensure company-wide understanding and participation. The incident response team should include:
CEO/CTO: CEO/CTO react to the malicious messages throughout the organization and communicating with the board.
IT Department: It is important to have the technical leader and members of the IT department to put their input on the plan, but it cannot be solely their responsibility.
Communications/Public Relations: It is necessary to deal with the potential media coverage and the agree on the message to be communicated to the public.
Legal Counsel: Having a lawyer involved provides legal insight and the impact of the incident response. Moreover, they ensure that the incident response meets compliance and regulatory requirements
After assembling a team, you will need to establish an incident response plan that has step by step instructions with key actions to be taken in the aftermath of an incident. Drills and exercises need to be implemented, so personnel is ready to respond when an incident happens. The reason for practice is to find weaknesses sooner and draw up a new plan if needed.
The biggest problem is that the team has to react fast. If you react quickly and effectively you will reduce your impact and cost. The team needs to have clear and constant communication throughout the remediation efforts.
If the incident has affected customers in any way, whether is is their data or specific to the company, the legal team needs to help to deal with this issue. The legal team should comply with any legislative requirements that need to be met.
Finally, after the team discovers weaknesses and keeps all the solutions together, the most important conclusion is to ensure that the organization is prepared to handle any potential incident.
CyberSponse Inc., a global leader in cybersecurity automation and orchestration, helps accelerate an organization’s processes, security operations teams and incident responders. The CyberSponse platform enables organizations to seamlessly integrate, automate and playbook their security tool stack, enabling better, faster and more effective security operations. With a global presence, offering an enterprise platform, CyberSponse enables organizations to secure their security operations teams and environments. For more information, visit www.CyberSponse.com.
For more on Cyber Incident Response and how to use playbooks in your organization please check out our other website: IncidentResponse.com.
