Do you take your security seriously? In this blog, you’ll learn why incident response testing is vital to your organization’s security strategy.

Incident Response is a structured approach organizations take to handle and manage security incidents effectively when they occur. A security incident refers to any event or situation that poses a threat to an organization’s information systems, networks, or data integrity. These incidents can range from cybersecurity breaches and data leaks to malware infections, unauthorized access attempts, or any other form of security breach.

The Incident Response process typically involves collaboration between different teams within the organization, such as Information technology (IT), cybersecurity, legal, communications, and management. Each team plays a specific role in responding to the incident effectively and ensuring minimal impact on the organization’s operations and reputation.

Advantages of testing your Incident Response

Incident Response and actual testing of incident response are vital to any organization’s security strategy. It’s essentially the process of testing the organization’s security protocols and response procedures to detect, respond and recover from a security incident in order to minimize the impact on the organization’s assets and reputation.

The Incident Response plan

Having a well-defined Incident Response plan in place is critical for organizations to respond promptly, efficiently, and in a coordinated manner during a security incident. It helps reduce the time taken to identify and mitigate the impact of incidents, thus minimizing potential damages and associated costs. Additionally, incident response plays a vital role in complying with various data protection and privacy regulations by demonstrating due diligence in handling security incidents.

You should put together an Incident response plan to understand what your organization should do in case of a security incident.

An incident response plan aims to provide a clear and efficient framework for responding to security events in real time. Typically, it involves several steps designed to contain and mitigate the impact of an incident.

These steps usually include the following:

• Preparation: Establishing policies and procedures to be followed in the event of an incident
• Identification: Understanding what an incident may look like and monitoring activity for potential incidents
• Containment: Isolating the affected area to prevent further damage
• Analysis: Investigate the incident. Understand the root cause and impact
• Eradication: Eliminate the cause and restore normal functionality to affected areas
• Recovery: Restore business-critical systems and data to their normal state, whilst reducing data loss
• Reporting: Document the incident and report to stakeholders/regulators where necessary

Why should you test your Incident Response plan

After putting an Incident Response plan together, you should ask yourself, what should I do with it? Think of your Incident Response plan as a valuable resource, unlike any other file you store on your system that you rarely look at.

But more than having the plan alone, it’s essential to regularly test and refine it to ensure efficiency and reliability when it’s time to deploy the plan.

There are a number of reasons why it’s important for organizations to conduct regular incident response testing:

1. Identify vulnerabilities: During an Incident response testing it’s possible to identify weaknesses in your organization’s security protocols and response procedures. By testing different scenarios and responses, organizations can assess their strengths and weaknesses and identify areas of improvement. This can help organizations fine-tune their response plans and identify any gaps, which can then be addressed.

2. Improve readiness: Organizations that test their incident response capabilities regularly, become more prepared for worst-case scenarios. By conducting tests, organizations can practice their response plans and ensure that everyone involved knows their roles and responsibilities in the event of a security incident.

3. Minimize downtime: An effective incident response plan will minimize downtime in the event of a security incident. By testing and fine-tuning these plans, organizations can reduce the amount of time it takes to detect, respond and recover from an incident. This will help minimize the impact of any security incidents on the organization and your customers or clients.

4. Boost confidence: Incident response testing gives organizations confidence in their ability to respond to a security incident. By validating their response plans and procedures, organizations can feel confident that they can mitigate the impact of an incident and protect their assets.

5. Meet regulatory/contractual requirements: Many organizations are subject to regulatory requirements for incident response planning and testing. By conducting regular tests, organizations can demonstrate to regulators that they are prepared for security incidents and compliant with regulatory requirements.

An example of regular incident response testing is the NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT). It’s compulsory for third-parties who provide care through a NHS contract, though all providers are encouraged to complete it if they hold, process and share data. The NHS DSPT 7.2 states that you should test your continuity plan and disaster recovery plan for data security incidents. Exercise scenarios should be based on incidents experienced by you and other organizations or are composed using threat intelligence, since the 1^st of July 2021, with an active board and business representation.

According to the Verizon Data Investigations Breach Report 2022, the human element continues to drive breaches. Whether it is the use of stolen credentials, phishing or simply an error, people continue to play a large part in incidents and breaches alike. The more people in your organization know how to spot an incident and what to do about it, the more likely it can have less of an effect on your organization.

Relevant standards for your Incident Response testing

The below compliance standards require some sort of incident response testing as a mandatory requirement:

Elevate your Incident Response with SureCloud

We at SureCloud can help your organization in a number of ways:

• Develop and deliver unique Adversary Simulations to exercise your company’s incident response, disaster recovery, and business continuity: This can be a topic-specific approach to meet, for example, requirement 12.10.2 of PCI DSS or a more generic security incident. Each exercise is delivered along with a detailed report highlighting any gaps, areas where you may have done well, and, crucially, providing recommendations for improvement. As part of this service, we also provide an attestation of the exercise, which is often found to be useful to provide to third parties for evidence of testing your capability.

Stay on top of regulations with our blog about Combatting E-Commerce Data Skimming With PCI Standard v4.0.

• Red Teaming: This essential cybersecurity pillar Identifies and addresses your security weaknesses through covert, simulated attacks. Our consultants undertake detailed reconnaissance, taking into account your organizational profile, to deliver highly authentic attacks that you are likely to face in the real world. Our detailed report and debrief will outline your Security team’s weaknesses and provide a detailed roadmap for improvement.

Incident response testing is crucial for any organization that takes security seriously. By identifying vulnerabilities, improving readiness, minimizing downtime, boosting confidence, and meeting regulatory requirements, organizations can ensure that they are well-prepared to detect, respond, and recover from security incidents most effectively.

Safeguarding your organization’s security

If you require any further support or advice regarding Incident Response Testing capabilities or how they link to the various standards and frameworks, contact SureCloud’s team of experts to find out more here. In addition, learn more about Aurora – our dynamic GRC platform, which can change your way of managing risk here.

Alternatively, take a look at how our Compliance services might be the perfect Compliance management solution for your compliance burden here.