With the evolution of technology and the revolution in the information age, the concern with data security has become more and more constant for companies, governments, and users. Since data are fundamental assets for the growth of companies, investing in protection is essential in organizations’ routines.

As cyber threats and crimes increase, efforts need to be stepped up, putting effective security measures in place. Therefore, there is a need to have a team specialized in security within a company, regardless of the industry, that constantly works to protect the information, relying on an Incident Response Plan (IRP). 

This way, the team can anticipate threats and develop the best actions to combat them immediately, without harming the company’s business.

For that, one needs to ensure this response plan works correctly, following the fundamental steps, and is well managed. In this article, we explain what an incident response plan is, its benefits, and the important aspects of putting one together. 

What is an Incident Response Plan (IRP)?

An IRP is a formal document that contains a set of tools and procedures that an IT team must adopt to deal with security issues that arise in the business. The purpose of these measures is to work on the prevention, identification, elimination, and recovery of cyber threats. 

Not only that, it ensures that actions are taken as quickly as possible, minimizing possible damage to the business, which ranges from loss of data and damage to resources, profits, and loss of customer trust. 

To be successful in an IRP, one needs to follow some fundamental steps that are well managed. The standard plan with these steps is based on the Incident Handler’s Handbook published by the SANS Institute. 

It is a document with six steps to be followed when building the plan, which are:

Preparation

The first step in implementing the plan is defining a specific team to work with the incidents. The team will be responsible for creating the incident documentation, containing the protocols to be followed in the execution of the plan’s actions. 

It is necessary to train the personnel to handle the situations by following the company’s security policies. This helps to understand exactly the risks to which the company is exposed and the preventive measures to be taken in different situations.

Identification 

The responsible team must work to detect deviations from operations, seeking to identify incidents and define their severity. 

In this detection, the type and severity of the problem are documented, as well as all the procedures that are being carried out in this regard. The formalization of this incident must answer the questions “Who, What, Where, Why, and How”.

Containment 

After identifying an incident, the team’s next step is to work on containment, in order to avoid future damage of the same nature. This containment is divided into short-term and long-term procedures.

The short-term containment works on the immediate solution of the problem, trying to prevent possible damage from the attack, while the long-term one refers to more complex actions, which involve the restoration of the entire corporate system, aiming at its return to normality.

Eradication 

Once the problem is contained, eradication actions are initiated. At this step, the focus is on the complete removal of the vulnerability and the necessary measures to avoid a recurrence of the problem. 

These actions can involve a change in authentication mechanisms, such as passwords and access permissions, or even a restoration of all affected systems in the company. The incident level and the most assertive action will be defined by using metric indicators, KPIs.

Recovery

In this step, the team works to verify and correct threats that may have gone unnoticed in the previous step, that is, the remnants of the incident. A scan action and transport of backups into cloud systems can be one of the necessary measures in this process. 

Also, the team assesses the performance of the previous step by analyzing the response time, the damage caused and the performance of the tasks, so that new directions to be followed are defined.

Lessons Learned

In order for the team to be prepared for future problems and to reduce any errors, it needs to record the entire containment process performed, containing the incidents and the procedures to combat them. 

It is a very important step as it documents the entire process and provides a history of occurrences to aid future actions. It is also at this step that mistakes and successes of actions are evaluated, which hindered or enhanced the development of actions.

How Important is an IRP?

A company that has an IRP is better prepared to deal with a wide variety of situations related to the security of its information. The best practices in the plan help the company to assertively anticipate and combat various threats. 

By adopting these practices, the company ensures greater security of its data, prevents the payment of penalties on data recovery costs, and avoids financial losses.

Greater Data Security

The implementation of protection and backup, correction, and access management systems, as well as the correct management of information, generate faster actions to protect and contain incidents.

Cost Reduction

The costs of fighting incidents can be high, due to regulatory sanctions, customer compensation, or the overall costs of investigating and restoring systems. 

An IRP helps to reduce these costs as it constantly works to prevent problems. Moreover, profit losses are also mitigated, in addition to minimizing costs, system downtime also decreases, limiting data loss.

It Maintains and Enhances the Company’s Reputation 

Without implementing an IRP, controlling and combating threats becomes more difficult, which can lead to business loss. This is because incidents do not only affect the technical aspects of the company but are directly related to business continuity. 

Constant and unresolved attacks on customer data undermine the credibility of the company responsible for its protection. Furthermore, it may lose investors and shareholders who stop believing in a flawed and easily breached business. 

On the other hand, quick and effective responses to incidents demonstrate the company’s greater commitment to data security and privacy, which increases its credibility and reputation.

Important Aspects of Putting an IRP Together

Following the IRP steps is critical to your success. However, the company needs to be aware it is not a fixed process and that it must be adapted to the organization’s structure. 

Hence the importance of periodic assessments to constantly evaluate the plan, eliminate its gaps, and adopt the necessary improvements.

To implement the plan, it is not necessary to have a large team of employees, but that they are all properly qualified, trained, and have good tools to ensure the best possible results in carrying out the activities. 

It is also necessary that other sectors undergo training so that they become aware of the company’s security policies and know how to proceed in the face of incidents and how to report them to the responsible team.

Implementing privileged access management to systems in a company is critical to ensuring that there are no information theft and other security issues.

The so-called cyberattacks are responsible, for example, for the theft and hijacking of information in exchange for money, causing several damages to the continuity of an organization’s business. They have become very common and their actions can cause not only financial losses but also image and reputation losses.

Unfortunately, the trend is that over the years, these cyberattacks will become more and more severe and that their number of occurrences will grow.

With this scenario, importance of privileged access management also grows. Cyberattacks happen through classic malware and phishing methods or the exploitation of zero-day software vulnerabilities, in addition to advanced social engineering techniques.

With all that, privileged access management comes to help ensure that organizations function. Thus, it covers the need to protect data, networks, and devices from malicious actions.

Privileged Access Management

Privileged access management allows one to control all access performed through an organization’s privileged credentials in a system, preventing insider attacks and breaches.

Its deployment allows IT departments to be able to reduce access privileges, following tools and groups. In this way, users will have the right to access only those applications and locations on the network they need to perform their duties. This concept is called the principle of least privilege.

Also, IT can have visibility of how user interactions are being done, access times, how many interactions with the system were performed, which servers were used, and what activities were performed by each user.

With privileged access management, a user – be they from the company or a third party – who has a high privilege will have administrative access to the system using a privileged account.

It is through this credential that one can make changes to various settings, in addition to changing security protections or other user accounts.

In this way, all accesses performed in a company’s network environment must be managed. Furthermore, an unauthorized user should never have access to privileged systems and data.

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senhasegura strives to ensure the sovereignty of companies’ actions and privileged information. To do so, we work against data theft and through traceability of administrator actions on networks, servers, databases, and a multitude of devices through a PAM solution.

How is privileged access done?

Privileged access to devices can be accomplished in two ways:

• Manually (least recommended); and
• Through specific Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions.

In this second case, PAM controls administrative access to a company’s critical systems to help it achieve its cybersecurity goals.

Controlling privileged actions allows one to protect a company’s IT systems against any attempt to carry out malicious actions, such as improper changes in the environment and theft of information. These blocked actions can take place both inside and outside the company.

In this context, using privileged access management technology is essential to optimize the deployment of a cybersecurity infrastructure in companies.

Moreover, the need for effective use of privileged access management techniques has never been greater, as traditional defense mechanisms such as antivirus, VPNs, and firewalls are subject to many failures today.

Myths and Truths

Now let’s take a look at some myths and truths about privileged access management:

1. Using PAM tools can completely prevent all cyberattacks.
Myth. This type of attack on the security of corporate networks is becoming more and more sophisticated. Therefore, there is no way for PAM to completely prevent all cyberattacks. However, this tool guarantees a lot of security for networks, preventing or mitigating the vast majority of attacks. In addition, it also needs to be constantly optimized to keep up with the boldness of cyberterrorists. As such, it is quite secure to avoid these problems.

2. Cyberattacks can be performed using privileged credentials.
True. Threats are becoming more sophisticated and intelligent, making use of attack techniques and tools to infiltrate company networks less visibly. Thus, cyberterrorists are investing in finding and taking advantage of privileged credentials to open their way to attack. That is why it is necessary to have a robust and reliable PAM tool to increasingly stop these attacks.

3. All companies invest in PAM.
Myth. Unfortunately, many companies remain blind to the importance of stopping attacks on their systems and end up not investing in tools for managing privileged access. Many of them believe there is no risk of intrusion when privileged access exists. But this is a wrong belief that could lead the company to bear huge losses later.

4. PAM deployment requires the use of shared accounts.
Myth. PAM has nothing to do with it. The use of shared accounts in itself poses a major cybersecurity risk. Also, many companies have had problems modifying the behavior of privileged users and administrators concerning this issue, posing a great risk to the company.

5. PAM allows you to create non-privileged accesses to a company’s network.
True. Although it seems that PAM only creates privileged access and accounts, in the most modern corporate tools of this system, it is also possible to create other types. In fact, PAM needs to facilitate any form of controlled connectivity to the system, through session and password management, and other security services, as well as monitoring and logging of activities.