When it comes to cyber security, it's important to have a comprehensive incident recovery process in place. This process is a multi-stage cycle that requires the cooperation and dedication of all IT staff, as well as the expertise of a consultant. It is used to designate specific functions, establish staff hierarchy and prioritize tasks following a serious cyber attack or data breach. The six steps of the incident recovery process are preparation, identification, containment, eradication, recovery and follow-up. The preparation phase is one of the most important steps in your incident recovery plan.
During this phase, your team should identify and classify security incidents and evaluate them using cybersecurity systems. This will help them focus on incidents that have immediate or serious consequences. The containment phase involves isolating the threat and mitigating any additional damage. This can be done by keeping the entire system up and running throughout the incident recovery process or by monitoring daily activities to detect suspicious actions and address the incident at a later date.
The eradication phase involves repairing, replacing or reinforcing systems that were affected by the incident. The recovery phase involves testing these systems to ensure proper functionality before operations and service delivery can resume. The follow-up phase is also known as the “lessons learned” phase. During this step, your team should review all pertinent information from the incident and use threat analysis to provide an in-depth view of current and future threats.
Finally, it's important to maintain communications throughout the incident recovery process. This includes internal communications between IT staff as well as external communications with consumers or patients in cases of data breaches. It's also important to onboard or train any new employees as close as possible to the initial preparation phase.
