With the increasing prevalence of cyber threats, a robust incident response policy has become essential. This policy outlines the organization’s approach to managing cybersecurity incidents, ensuring prompt and effective response, and minimizing the impact of any potential breaches.

What is an Incident Response Policy?

An incident response policy is a comprehensive document that outlines an organization’s strategy for handling cybersecurity incidents. It encompasses the company’s approach towards incident response, the resources allocated, the team responsible, the tools needed, and the implementation of the response operation.

The Importance of an Incident Response Policy

An incident response policy is crucial for an organization to manage and respond to security incidents effectively. It ensures the company can promptly implement the appropriate response, minimizing the potential damage caused by cyber threats.

Moreover, this policy applies to all responses to security incidents that could affect the organization, whether from within or directed toward the organization.

Preparing an Incident Response Policy: Key Elements

The preparation of an incident response policy involves several critical steps:

1. Evaluating the Existing Situation

The first step in developing an incident response policy is evaluating the organization’s current state. This includes assessing each asset’s vulnerability level and identifying the appropriate mitigation and remediation methods.

2. Establishing the Incident Response Team

The incident response team plays a crucial role in managing security risks. The team is responsible for determining the procedures for responding to an incident, implementing them, and evaluating their effectiveness in the aftermath.

3. Creating the Incident Response Plan

The incident response plan (IRP) is a crucial part of the incident response policy. It should define the criteria for identifying incidents, which the organization can incorporate as rules in their security monitoring and management tools.

4. Regular Training and Awareness

Organizations should regularly train their incident response team and provide specialized training for new technologies and significant organizational changes.

Incident Response Policy Components

A comprehensive incident response policy should include the following components:

1. Purpose and Scope

The purpose and scope section defines the policy’s applicability and the activities it mandates.

2. Incident Response Team

This section outlines the incident response team’s composition and roles and responsibilities.

3. Incident Response Plan

The incident response plan section provides a detailed overview of the organization’s response procedures to various incidents.

4. Incident Reporting and Escalation Procedures

This section outlines the procedures for reporting and escalating incidents to the relevant stakeholders.

5. Training and Awareness

The training and awareness section emphasizes the importance of regular training for the incident response team and the entire organization.

6. Review and Update Procedures

This section mandates regular review and update of the incident response policy and plan.

Incident Response Policy Implementation

Once the incident response policy is in place, the organization should take steps to ensure its effective implementation. This includes:

1. Regular Testing and Review

The organization should regularly test its incident response capabilities through tabletop exercises and simulations. Any lessons learned during these exercises should be incorporated into the incident response plan.

2. Continuous Training

The organization should provide continuous training to its incident response team and the entire organization to ensure everyone is prepared to respond to potential incidents.

3. Regular Updates

The incident response policy and plan should be regularly updated to reflect organizational processes, technologies, and threat landscape changes.

Conclusion

In the face of growing cybersecurity threats, organizations must have an effective incident response policy. This policy enables the organization to promptly and effectively respond to incidents and helps minimize the potential impact of cybersecurity breaches. Therefore, organizations should invest time and resources in developing, implementing, and maintaining a robust incident response policy.

Incident Response Policy

Purpose

This policy ensures that SOname is prepared for a security incident. It details precisely what must happen if one is suspected, covering electronic and physical security incidents.

Scope

The scope of this policy covers all information assets owned or provided by SOname, whether they reside on the corporate network or elsewhere.

Policy

Types of Incidents

A security incident can take two forms regarding the company’s information assets. For this policy, a security incident is defined as one of the following:

• Electronic: This type of incident can range from an attacker or user accessing the network for unauthorized/malicious purposes to a virus outbreak to a suspected Trojan or malware infection.
• Physical: A physical IT security incident involves the loss or theft of a laptop, mobile device, PDA/Smartphone, portable storage device, or other digital apparatus that may contain company information.

Plan Overview

SOname will ensure that the Incident Response plan adheres to the following conditions:

• The Incident Response plan includes, at a minimum, roles, responsibilities, and communication strategies in case of a compromise.
• The Incident Response plan includes specific incident response, business recovery and continuity procedures, and data backup processes.
• The Incident Response plan includes coverage and response mechanisms for all critical system components and all other critical IT resources.
• The Incident Response plan includes reference or inclusion of incident response procedures from the payment brands.

SOname has developed and implemented a comprehensive Incident Response plan encompassing the following categories and supporting activities. SOname fully enforces these policy directives to ensure the Incident Response plan initiatives are executed formally and consistently for all system components within the data environment and all other critical IT resources.

The five (5) main categories of the Incident Response plan include the following:

• Preparing for an incident
• Detecting an incident
• Responding to and containing an incident
• Recovery from an incident
• Post-incident activities and awareness

Preparing for the Incident

All SOname employees should be aware of common security threats and computer incidents that may compromise the organization’s network infrastructure, cause harm to other related systems, or pose a significant financial, operational, or business threat to the organization. The Incident Response plan should be viewed as a set of procedures for examining a computer security incident, which includes preparing for, detecting, responding to, containing, recovery, and any other necessary post-incident activities. There are numerous security threats and computer incidents that are potentially detrimental to any organization, such as the following:

• Malicious or careless employees
• Malware (computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses, most rootkits, spyware, and other malicious and unwanted software)
• Social engineering
• Spam
• Spoofing and phishing
• Denial of service
• Distributed denial of service
• Man-in-the-middle attacks
• Additional network attacks, including hacking and other common attack vectors
• Physical and environmental conditions resulting in threats to the organization’s system resources

Adequately preparing for an incident requires security personnel to be knowledgeable about common system threats and implement safeguards and control mechanisms that protect system resources within SOname.

A vital component of preparing for an incident is ensuring that all personnel have relevant security training for their roles and responsibilities. Additionally, all system components and other IT resources deemed critical by SOname must be securely hardened with best-of-breed hardening and configuration standards. Sources used may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• NIST (http://www.nist.gov/index.html)
• SANS (http://www.sans.org/)
• CERT (http://www.cisecurity.org/)
• ISACA (http://www.isaca.org/)
• BITS & Shared Assessments (http://www.sharedassessments.org/)

The numerous policy and procedure guidelines outlined within this document serve as an excellent resource for ensuring adequate safeguards for these systems and critical IT resources. Specifically, the SOname Security Awareness Training initiatives provide excellent resources that allow employees to keep abreast of significant threats to company assets.

The above personnel are available 24/7 to respond and monitor (i) any evidence of unauthorized activity, (ii) detection of unauthorized wireless access points, (iii) critical IDS alerts, and (iv) reports of unauthorized critical system or content file changes.

SOname trains the above personnel in their incident response roles and responsibilities and provides refresher training, at a minimum, annually. Incident response training includes training in identifying and reporting suspicious activities, both from external and internal sources.

Adequately preparing for an incident also requires security personnel to test the Incident Response procedures annually, at a minimum, to determine the incident response effectiveness and document the results.

Detecting an Incident

Detecting an incident requires a genuine commitment by all employees to be constantly aware of their surroundings for any social engineering, physical, or environmental threat. Detection also requires due diligence and consistency by authorized employees regarding the secure configuration and review of network and system logs, as well as being aware of network traffic anomalies and any suspicious or disruptive network patterns or incidents. As a result of these reviews, employees responsible for reviewing network and system logs (firewalls, routers, switches, IDS/IPS, operating systems, applications, databases, etc.) are to report any malicious, suspicious, or disruptive event immediately to the Incident Response Team. Designated individuals are available for 24/7 incident monitoring and response.

The Incident Response Team can only respond to a given incident if they are made aware of the issue. Detection, therefore, is a vital component of the Incident Response Plan.

Responding to and Containing an Incident

Any incident deemed a relevant threat to the organization requires a rapid response from authorized personnel, such as the Incident Response Team. This fast response follows a standard course of action designed to minimize the impact of the incident on the organization’s critical network and system infrastructure.

The following documented response mechanisms serve as the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for responding to any incident within the organization:

1. For any incident that has been detected, the Incident Response Team is to be immediately notified.

2. The Incident Response Team is to formally assume control and identify the threat and its severity to the organization’s information systems.

3. In identifying the threat, the Incident Response Team is to specifically identify which resources are at risk, both internal and external, and which harmful processes are currently running on those resources.

4. The Incident Response Team is to decide if the resources at risk (hardware, software, etc.) require physical or logical removal. Resources that pose a significant threat to the continuity of the business are to be immediately removed or isolated, either physically or logically.

Resources that may require physical or logical removal or isolation may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• All IP addresses in use
• Firewalls
• Routers and switches
• Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS)/Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS)
• Any enterprise-wide applications (CRM systems, etc.)
• Remote access
• Point-to-point secure data transmission methods used for data traversing back and forth on the network
• Wireless networking or networks
• Authentication servers (RADIUS)
• Web servers
• Proxy servers
• File servers
• E-mail servers
• DNS servers
• Operating systems
• Databases
• Applications

5. If the incident has in any way resulted in a criminal matter that may be readily identified, SOname must immediately report it to law enforcement officials. This may include, but is not limited to, the following:

• Local law enforcement
• The United States Secret Service (for credit card fraud)
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

6. Investigating the incident is also critical in the Incident Response plan. Proper investigative techniques are to include but are not limited to the following:

• Understanding how the incident occurred and what led to the compromise
• Reviewing all necessary system documentation, such as logs, audit trails, rule sets, configuration and hardening standards, and all other supporting documentation
• Interviewing personnel as needed
• Examining any third-party providers and their respective products and services that are used within the SOname network architecture
• If warranted, a third-party resource for assisting in the investigation of the incident may be used (this will be done at the management’s discretion)

Recovery from an Incident

Recovery procedures will include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Restoring systems from clean backups (a trusted source only)
• Completely rebuilding systems as needed and warranted
• Replacing systems as needed (this includes all system components within the cardholder data environment and any other critical IT resources
• Reconfiguring network security (more robust, more adaptive configuration and hardening rules) for all system components within the cardholder data environment and any other IT resources deemed critical by SOname

The recovery procedures will be commensurate with the incident. This will be conducted on a case-by-case basis, and all aspects of the recovery process will be fully documented. Depending on the nature and extent of the incident, disaster recovery, and business continuity procedures will be invoked.

Post-Incident Activities and Awareness

A formal and documented Incident Response Report (IRR) will be compiled and given to SOname management within an acceptable time frame following the incident. The IRR must contain the following elements:

• Detailed description of the incident
• Response mechanisms undertaken
• Reporting activities to all relevant third parties as needed
• Recovery activities are undertaken to restore affected systems
• A list of Lessons Learned from the incident, which also incorporates recent industry developments and which initiative SOname can take to mitigate and hopefully eliminate the likelihood of future incidents

Revision