What Is an Incident Response Plan (IRP)?

4 min. read

An incident response (IR) plan is a documented strategy outlining how an organization will detect, respond to, and recover from cybersecurity incidents or other disruptions. Its purpose is to minimize the impact of security breaches, data leaks, malware attacks, and other potential threats while ensuring business continuity.

Why is an Incident Response Plan Important?

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, the importance of a well-crafted incident response plan (IRP) cannot be overstated. Organizations are increasingly vulnerable to security incidents that jeopardize sensitive data, financial stability, and stakeholder trust:

  • Attack surface change inevitably leads to exposures. Across industries, attack surfaces are always in a state of flux. Our research indicates that, on average, an organization’s attack surface has over 300 new services every month. These additions account for nearly 32% of new high or critical cloud exposures for organizations.
  • Opportunities for lateral movement and data exfiltration are abundant. Just three categories of exposures—IT and Networking Infrastructure, Business Operations Applications, and Remote Access Services—account for 73% of high-risk exposures across the organizations we studied and can be exploited for lateral movement and data exfiltration.
  • Critical IT and security services are dangerously exposed to the internet. Over 23% of exposures involve critical IT and security infrastructure, opening doors to opportunistic attacks. These include vulnerabilities in application-layer protocols like SNMP, NetBIOS, PPTP, and internet-accessible administrative login pages of routers, firewalls, VPNs, and other core networking and security appliances.

Developing an effective incident response strategy is essential for navigating the complexities of security management and maintaining the confidence of clients and stakeholders alike.

An effective incident response plan outlines the necessary actions to:

  • Identify and react to an incident.
  • Quickly and efficiently evaluate the situation.
  • Inform the relevant individuals and organizations about the incident.
  • Coordinate the company's response.
  • Intensify the response efforts according to the seriousness of the incident.
  • Assist in the recovery efforts following the incident.

Best Practices for Building a Solid Incident Response Plan

How to Build an Incident Response Plan

Being prepared for a security incident is half the battle. Having an IRP will help you respond quickly and effectively if an incident occurs. An incident response plan should lay out clear instructions for actions to take in case of a cyber incident. Given the incident type and severity, it should align with the NIST Incident Response Lifecycle and include a clear and concise description of the appropriate incident response steps.

Here are the key components of an incident response plan:

Define Purpose and Scope

Define the purpose and scope of your IRP. Identify the goal, personnel, and organizational systems it addresses and the objectives you hope to achieve. Addressing these items will help you create a plan tailored to your organization's specific cybersecurity needs.

Identify Document Review and Maintenance Requirements

Define the process for reviewing and maintaining the IRP by specifying the roles responsible for its upkeep and approval and the frequency of this process. It is recommended that the IRP be reviewed, updated, and approved at least once a year whenever there are significant changes in the operational environment or following a simulated or actual execution of the IRP.

Additionally, lessons learned from these simulated or actual exercises should be evaluated and assessed to identify potential improvements to the document after each exercise.

Identify the Cybersecurity Incident Response Team

The Cybersecurity Incident Response Team (CSIRT) comprises core members who will respond to security threats. The document should include a list of roles and responsibilities and the contact information for each individual fulfilling those roles, either in the main body or as an appendix.

Designate an incident response lead (IRL) and outline the members of the core response team. This core team should consist of individuals from various departments that regularly handle cybersecurity matters, including security operations, security management, legal, and privacy.

Furthermore, the organization should identify an extension team that can be activated when necessary. This extension team may include personnel from human resources, marketing, physical security, law enforcement liaisons, and any other relevant departments required to respond to the incident.

Document a Risk Classification Matrix

An organization should create a risk classification matrix that considers the severity and urgency of security incidents. This matrix should outline the specific risk classification levels that trigger the activation of the incident response plan. Establishing a risk-based timeline for activating the IRP is an essential step that should ideally be taken.

Furthermore, the organization should identify incidents that warrant immediate activation of the IRP. Such incidents include ransomware attacks, malware infections, denial-of-service attacks, customer data breaches, and critical insider threats.

Outline and Describe the Incident Response Process

To ensure the IRP is in an easily consumable format, develop a diagrammed workflow for the incident response process. Procedures should be identified in the IRP for each process area in the overall workflow. This should include:

  • Preparation: Outlines how the IRP and response teams are prepared and trained for an incident.
  • Incident Handling Systems: Covers the systems used for event investigation and incident ticketing/tracking.
  • Detection and Analysis: Describes how an event is identified and evaluated to determine if escalation to an incident is required.
  • Containment, Mitigation, and Eradication: The process for containing the incident’s impact, remediation and environmental mitigation.
  • Recovery: How the organization will take steps to restore normal business operations, typically a reference to a disaster recovery plan (DRP) or system runbooks
  • Deactivation of the IRP: Specifies the criteria and processes for formally deactivating the incident response once the incident has been fully contained and recovered.
  • Post-incident Activity: Explains how the organization will document historical events, identify the root cause of incidents, identify lessons learned, and incorporate improvements into future IRP iterations.

Define a Communications Plan

Define a communications plan in either the document's body or appendix. Expected IRL communications must be outlined here to achieve coordinated outcomes during uncertain and stressful situations. This plan is often provided in table format. It should define:

  • Tools used in an incident (e.g., conference bridges, email, or messaging service).
  • Protocols for how team members should communicate with each other,
  • Specific communications templates or content that should be sent.
  • The frequency at which communications need to be sent.
  • Any time-based requirements for sending communications.
  • Format and method for delivering the communications.
  • Designated owners and senders responsible for communications.
  • Intended audience and recipients lists for each communication.

Establish IRP Training and Testing

Document the requirements for training personnel in the IRP and performing tabletop exercises or full simulations. To ensure preparedness, it is recommended that personnel be trained and tested on the IRP at least annually.

Establish Performance Measuring and Metrics

Define how the performance of the IRP is measured and which metrics will be used to measure performance. These may include standard metrics for detection and response, such as:

  • Mean time to acknowledge (MTTA)
  • Mean time to detect (MTTD)
  • Mean time to contain (MTTC)
  • Mean time to recovery (MTTR)
  • Mean time between failures (MTBF)
  • System availability
  • Service-level Agreement (SLA) Compliance
  • Process metrics (such as the number of times the IRP is updated or tested annually)

Define Compliance and Non-Compliance

Identify how the organization will assess compliance with the IRP and what actions (such as disciplinary action) shall be taken for non-compliance or certain types.

It's important to remember that incident response planning is a continuous and evolving process rather than a one-time task. After you've created an initial incident response plan, ongoing testing and evaluation are crucial, as both processes and threats can change over time.

Ongoing Updates

To ensure the plan's effectiveness, conduct regular assessments and simulations that reflect the current threat landscape and organizational structure. It's advisable to reassess and validate incident response plans annually. This regular review helps identify gaps in the plan and incorporates lessons learned from past incidents or exercises.

Any significant changes within the organization, such as IT infrastructure updates, business operations shifts, or alterations to regulatory and compliance requirements, should trigger an immediate revision of the incident response plan.

Incident Response (IR) Plan FAQs

The key steps in an IRP typically include:

  • Preparation: Establishing policies, tools, and teams.
  • Identification: Detecting and confirming incidents.
  • Containment: Limiting the spread of threats.
  • Eradication: Eliminating the root cause of the incident.
  • Recovery: Restoring systems and data to normal operation.
  • Lessons Learned: Reviewing and improving the plan post-incident.
An IRP should involve stakeholders from various departments, including IT security, legal, HR, public relations, and senior management. External partners, such as cybersecurity consultants and law enforcement, may also play a role during significant incidents.
An IRP should be reviewed and updated annually or whenever significant changes occur in the organization, such as new technology adoption or regulatory updates. Regular testing through simulations or tabletop exercises is critical to ensure its effectiveness.

Common challenges include:

  • Lack of clarity in roles and responsibilities.
  • Need for adequate training for incident response teams.
  • Poor communication during incidents.
  • Outdated or incomplete documentation.
  • More budget or resources are needed to support the plan.

Common tools include:

  • SIEM (Security Information and Event Management): For monitoring and identifying threats.
  • EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response): For detecting and mitigating endpoint threats.
  • Incident Management Platforms: To coordinate and document response efforts.
  • Forensic Analysis Tools: To investigate the root cause of incidents.
  • Communication Tools: For secure, real-time collaboration during incidents.