Planning to mitigate risks like cyberattacks and supply chain disruptions is a non-negotiable part of security readiness today. Regardless of the size or complexity of operations, your security program should include a robust incident response plan (IRP) to boost your overall preparedness for any disruptive scenario.
An IRP holds value beyond operational stability—it’s prescribed by many security regulations and standards. Businesses in SaaS industries also use a strong incident response plan as a tool to build trust among stakeholders.
Creating an incident response plan, however, can be an extensive process. You need to align the needs of different departments, assess evolving threats, and consider resource availability to devise a realistic plan.
We have prepared this guide to help you get started with your IRP. We’ll cover six steps and inherent best practices to create a tailored incident response plan for your organization.
What is an incident response plan?
An incident response plan is a comprehensive and structured document detailing the steps you’ll take to recover from unfavorable security or operational events and minimize their impact on your business. It helps you handle active security threats swiftly and maintain the integrity of sensitive data.
A well-developed IRP should support your organization against different adverse events that threaten an organization's revenue, data, or credibility. For example:
- Malware outbreaks
- Data breaches
- Insider threats
- Power outages
- System failure
- Firewall breaches
An ideal IRP should encompass diverse threat scenarios and suggest a clear plan of action for each. Specifically, the plan should detail:
- Your organization’s incident response framework and its general approach to active threats
- Steps within each incident response phase, from detection to post-recovery processes
- Roles and responsibilities within the outlined workflows
- Monitoring processes and performance metrics
{{cta_withimage8="/cta-modules"}} | GRC implementation guide
Why do you need an incident response plan?
In today’s fast-evolving threat landscape, proactive threat management measures don’t always guarantee a solid security posture or undisrupted operations—an IRP fills the gap by helping organizations respond to evolving risks. It’s a crucial aspect of a business continuity plan, with a focus on specific communication and action protocols to safeguard against active threats quickly and effectively.
Additionally, various state and federal laws require organizations to notify affected parties of a security incident, as do several regulations, such as:
Seeing as breach notifications are an essential aspect of incident responses, a well-developed plan brings you closer to complying with the above regulations and standards. Other benefits include:
- Systematic threat mitigation: An incident response plan gives you a formalized way of planning for and spotting the early symptoms of security incidents so that you can contain or neutralize them before they escalate into severe events.
- Enhanced stakeholder confidence: Customers, investors, partners, and other stakeholders are more likely to trust your organization if you have clear protocols for handling security incidents.
- Improved reputation: A solid plan lets you manage security incidents quickly and effectively, which enhances your reputation as a trustworthy vendor or partner.
- Cost-effectiveness: Successful incident responses minimize financial losses caused by security breaches, which averaged $4.88 million in 2023, according to an IBM report. They also protect you from hefty penalties and costly legal escalations.
6 steps to developing an effective incident response plan
To create a thorough incident response plan that ensures quick threat mitigation and recovery, you can follow these standard steps:
- Understand your security posture
- Assign incident response roles and responsibilities
- Outline threat management procedures containing incidents
- Define notification procedures
- Formalize incident recovery processes
- Test and monitor your incident response plan
Step 1: Understand your security posture
Each organization has a unique risk landscape and security posture needs that inform an effective incident response plan. You should conduct a thorough security review and risk assessment to understand the most notable threats you should prepare for.
Some of the key tasks you should perform include:
- Vulnerability scanning
- Vendor risk assessment and security reviews
- Enterprise risk assessment and mitigation
- Access reviews
- Historical incident data collection
You can consult with your security team to have an objective overview of your security and risk landscape. Additionally, you should also get your compliance team on board to map any regulation-specific requirement that your IRP should meet.
If you operate in a heavily regulated industry, it’s best to start your workflows with the help of an IRP template that accounts for industry-standard scenarios. For instance, you can use Vanta’s ready-made incident response plan template to access a policy completion checklist that aligns with different regulations and systematically draft different phases of the plan, from scoping to reporting.
Step 2: Assign incident response roles and responsibilities
Incident responses should be handled by a dedicated group of experts commonly referred to as a computer security incident response team (CRIST). Your CRIST should include several key professionals, most notably:
- System administrator
- Infrastructure maintenance expert
- Detection and response engineer (or incident responders)
- Incident coordinator
- Incident communication manager
Depending on the size of your organization, each role can be assigned to a single person or multiple team members. If you manage a large IT infrastructure, you may want to form multiple smaller teams that will coordinate their incident response activities.
Even though a CRIST is a specific team, it should work in a closed environment. It’s crucial to also include other relevant parties like compliance managers, legal staff, and data owners.
Additionally, work on establishing clear communication channels, both horizontal and vertical, to foster collaboration and effective reporting.
{{cta_webinar1="/cta-modules"}} | Webinar: Scaling your GRC program with automation and AI
Step 3: Outline threat management procedures containing incidents
An effective IRP begins with rapid identification of threats and vulnerabilities, so you must set up procedures for identifying, logging, and containing incidents in your policy document. Key items to specify include:
- The person responsible for receiving threat notices
- Threat notification channel (email, phone, in-person, etc.)
- Contents of a threat report (source, impacted systems, etc.)
During this step, you need to decide how you’ll foster the culture of security awareness. While you might have a dedicated incident response plan, it’s worth devising strategies to help all your team members improve cybersecurity governance on the ground level.
For example, a sales representative who suspects they’ve engaged with a phishing email should notify a specified cybersecurity team member immediately. They should then investigate the threat and decide whether the IRP should be executed, in which case the CRIST should get involved.
Your incident response plan should also outline threat containment procedures, for example:
- Notifying owners of compromised systems
- Isolating malware-infected devices or network components
- Re-routing compromised traffic
- Installing security patches
After defining the relevant processes, assign them to corresponding task owners to maintain a trail of accountability and ensure everyone’s responsibilities are clear.
Step 4: Define notification procedures
Depending on your industry and applicable regulations, you might need to notify various parties of a security incident, most notably:
- Customers
- Business associates
- Relevant authoritative bodies
The specifics of your notification procedures will most likely depend on your compliance requirements. For example, HIPAA requires the submission of notification letters no later than 60 days after the incident was discovered, and there are additional criteria for who should be notified.
If none of your applicable regulations prescribe the notification requirements, you can structure the notification procedure as you see fit. What matters is that all the affected parties are notified immediately and that you can provide assurance regarding remediation.
According to industry best practices, it’s ideal to have a dedicated person, such as the communications manager, to initiate the notification procedures. Their responsibilities will include:
- Mapping the applicable notification requirements
- Assessing the extent of the incident that impacts the identified parties
- Determining what the notification should cover
- Sending notification letters and leading the communication with stakeholders
Step 5: Formalize incident recovery processes
Unlike threat discovery and notification, incident recovery processes can be more challenging to standardize because each scenario calls for a different procedure. The best practice is to predict all the possible scenarios and standardize the recovery process for each.
For example, if an employee’s business email was compromised, the recovery process can involve:
- Blocking the account’s access to the organization’s systems
- Shutting down the email account remotely
- Changing the passwords of all accounts connected to the email
- Assessing the potential or criticality of compromised data and systems to take further action if needed
Your risk assessment and security review will play an essential role in this step because you’ll use the results to identify different scenarios and outline the corresponding recovery processes.
The problem is that such reviews require extensive busywork that can prevent you from implementing recovery processes thoroughly. It’s best to automate assessments and reviews with a quality GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) solution to eliminate repetitive manual tasks and improve your team’s efficiency.
{{cta_withimage8="/cta-modules"}} | GRC implementation guide
Step 6: Test and monitor your incident response plan
Your IRP should be tested and validated in advance so that you can ensure its reliability from a practical perspective. This is typically done through tabletop exercises, which simulate different threat scenarios to assess your team’s responses.
Some of the main scenarios you can simulate include:
- Breach of a third-party service with access to your organization’s sensitive data
- Malware outbreak affecting a portion of your systems
- An external attack performed by a malicious party
When testing your plan or monitoring its real-life performance, you should use standard metrics to quantify the plan’s effectiveness. Some of the most common KPIs to track include:
- Mean time to detect (MTTD)
- Mean time to acknowledge (MTTA)
- Mean time to respond/resolve (MTTR)
- Incidents over time
- Total downtime
Create watertight incident response plans with Vanta
Effective incident management and planning requires the use of comprehensive software. If you need a reliable solution to keep your GRC workflows efficient, you can leverage Vanta. It's an end-to-end trust management platform that streamlines incident response planning alongside risk and compliance management.
Vanta offers a robust GRC product that automates numerous processes related to risk visibility, monitoring, and evidence collection. Some of the product’s key features include:
- Automated tests with custom controls
- Vulnerability management
- People and access management
- Over 375 integrations with popular platforms (including vulnerability scanners, security training solutions, and more)
Vanta offers a dedicated Policy Builder tool with templates to create standard security documentation, including business recovery and incident response plans. You can work on your policy with your team and get it reviewed and approved—all within the platform.
To discover GRC functionalities relevant to your team, schedule a custom demo today.
{{cta_simple7="/cta-modules"}} | GRC product page
Risk
How to build an effective incident response plan: Steps and best practices
Looking to automate up to 90% of the work for GRC compliance?
Planning to mitigate risks like cyberattacks and supply chain disruptions is a non-negotiable part of security readiness today. Regardless of the size or complexity of operations, your security program should include a robust incident response plan (IRP) to boost your overall preparedness for any disruptive scenario.
An IRP holds value beyond operational stability—it’s prescribed by many security regulations and standards. Businesses in SaaS industries also use a strong incident response plan as a tool to build trust among stakeholders.
Creating an incident response plan, however, can be an extensive process. You need to align the needs of different departments, assess evolving threats, and consider resource availability to devise a realistic plan.
We have prepared this guide to help you get started with your IRP. We’ll cover six steps and inherent best practices to create a tailored incident response plan for your organization.
What is an incident response plan?
An incident response plan is a comprehensive and structured document detailing the steps you’ll take to recover from unfavorable security or operational events and minimize their impact on your business. It helps you handle active security threats swiftly and maintain the integrity of sensitive data.
A well-developed IRP should support your organization against different adverse events that threaten an organization's revenue, data, or credibility. For example:
- Malware outbreaks
- Data breaches
- Insider threats
- Power outages
- System failure
- Firewall breaches
An ideal IRP should encompass diverse threat scenarios and suggest a clear plan of action for each. Specifically, the plan should detail:
- Your organization’s incident response framework and its general approach to active threats
- Steps within each incident response phase, from detection to post-recovery processes
- Roles and responsibilities within the outlined workflows
- Monitoring processes and performance metrics
{{cta_withimage8="/cta-modules"}} | GRC implementation guide
Why do you need an incident response plan?
In today’s fast-evolving threat landscape, proactive threat management measures don’t always guarantee a solid security posture or undisrupted operations—an IRP fills the gap by helping organizations respond to evolving risks. It’s a crucial aspect of a business continuity plan, with a focus on specific communication and action protocols to safeguard against active threats quickly and effectively.
Additionally, various state and federal laws require organizations to notify affected parties of a security incident, as do several regulations, such as:
Seeing as breach notifications are an essential aspect of incident responses, a well-developed plan brings you closer to complying with the above regulations and standards. Other benefits include:
- Systematic threat mitigation: An incident response plan gives you a formalized way of planning for and spotting the early symptoms of security incidents so that you can contain or neutralize them before they escalate into severe events.
- Enhanced stakeholder confidence: Customers, investors, partners, and other stakeholders are more likely to trust your organization if you have clear protocols for handling security incidents.
- Improved reputation: A solid plan lets you manage security incidents quickly and effectively, which enhances your reputation as a trustworthy vendor or partner.
- Cost-effectiveness: Successful incident responses minimize financial losses caused by security breaches, which averaged $4.88 million in 2023, according to an IBM report. They also protect you from hefty penalties and costly legal escalations.
6 steps to developing an effective incident response plan
To create a thorough incident response plan that ensures quick threat mitigation and recovery, you can follow these standard steps:
- Understand your security posture
- Assign incident response roles and responsibilities
- Outline threat management procedures containing incidents
- Define notification procedures
- Formalize incident recovery processes
- Test and monitor your incident response plan
Step 1: Understand your security posture
Each organization has a unique risk landscape and security posture needs that inform an effective incident response plan. You should conduct a thorough security review and risk assessment to understand the most notable threats you should prepare for.
Some of the key tasks you should perform include:
- Vulnerability scanning
- Vendor risk assessment and security reviews
- Enterprise risk assessment and mitigation
- Access reviews
- Historical incident data collection
You can consult with your security team to have an objective overview of your security and risk landscape. Additionally, you should also get your compliance team on board to map any regulation-specific requirement that your IRP should meet.
If you operate in a heavily regulated industry, it’s best to start your workflows with the help of an IRP template that accounts for industry-standard scenarios. For instance, you can use Vanta’s ready-made incident response plan template to access a policy completion checklist that aligns with different regulations and systematically draft different phases of the plan, from scoping to reporting.
Step 2: Assign incident response roles and responsibilities
Incident responses should be handled by a dedicated group of experts commonly referred to as a computer security incident response team (CRIST). Your CRIST should include several key professionals, most notably:
- System administrator
- Infrastructure maintenance expert
- Detection and response engineer (or incident responders)
- Incident coordinator
- Incident communication manager
Depending on the size of your organization, each role can be assigned to a single person or multiple team members. If you manage a large IT infrastructure, you may want to form multiple smaller teams that will coordinate their incident response activities.
Even though a CRIST is a specific team, it should work in a closed environment. It’s crucial to also include other relevant parties like compliance managers, legal staff, and data owners.
Additionally, work on establishing clear communication channels, both horizontal and vertical, to foster collaboration and effective reporting.
{{cta_webinar1="/cta-modules"}} | Webinar: Scaling your GRC program with automation and AI
Step 3: Outline threat management procedures containing incidents
An effective IRP begins with rapid identification of threats and vulnerabilities, so you must set up procedures for identifying, logging, and containing incidents in your policy document. Key items to specify include:
- The person responsible for receiving threat notices
- Threat notification channel (email, phone, in-person, etc.)
- Contents of a threat report (source, impacted systems, etc.)
During this step, you need to decide how you’ll foster the culture of security awareness. While you might have a dedicated incident response plan, it’s worth devising strategies to help all your team members improve cybersecurity governance on the ground level.
For example, a sales representative who suspects they’ve engaged with a phishing email should notify a specified cybersecurity team member immediately. They should then investigate the threat and decide whether the IRP should be executed, in which case the CRIST should get involved.
Your incident response plan should also outline threat containment procedures, for example:
- Notifying owners of compromised systems
- Isolating malware-infected devices or network components
- Re-routing compromised traffic
- Installing security patches
After defining the relevant processes, assign them to corresponding task owners to maintain a trail of accountability and ensure everyone’s responsibilities are clear.
Step 4: Define notification procedures
Depending on your industry and applicable regulations, you might need to notify various parties of a security incident, most notably:
- Customers
- Business associates
- Relevant authoritative bodies
The specifics of your notification procedures will most likely depend on your compliance requirements. For example, HIPAA requires the submission of notification letters no later than 60 days after the incident was discovered, and there are additional criteria for who should be notified.
If none of your applicable regulations prescribe the notification requirements, you can structure the notification procedure as you see fit. What matters is that all the affected parties are notified immediately and that you can provide assurance regarding remediation.
According to industry best practices, it’s ideal to have a dedicated person, such as the communications manager, to initiate the notification procedures. Their responsibilities will include:
- Mapping the applicable notification requirements
- Assessing the extent of the incident that impacts the identified parties
- Determining what the notification should cover
- Sending notification letters and leading the communication with stakeholders
Step 5: Formalize incident recovery processes
Unlike threat discovery and notification, incident recovery processes can be more challenging to standardize because each scenario calls for a different procedure. The best practice is to predict all the possible scenarios and standardize the recovery process for each.
For example, if an employee’s business email was compromised, the recovery process can involve:
- Blocking the account’s access to the organization’s systems
- Shutting down the email account remotely
- Changing the passwords of all accounts connected to the email
- Assessing the potential or criticality of compromised data and systems to take further action if needed
Your risk assessment and security review will play an essential role in this step because you’ll use the results to identify different scenarios and outline the corresponding recovery processes.
The problem is that such reviews require extensive busywork that can prevent you from implementing recovery processes thoroughly. It’s best to automate assessments and reviews with a quality GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) solution to eliminate repetitive manual tasks and improve your team’s efficiency.
{{cta_withimage8="/cta-modules"}} | GRC implementation guide
Step 6: Test and monitor your incident response plan
Your IRP should be tested and validated in advance so that you can ensure its reliability from a practical perspective. This is typically done through tabletop exercises, which simulate different threat scenarios to assess your team’s responses.
Some of the main scenarios you can simulate include:
- Breach of a third-party service with access to your organization’s sensitive data
- Malware outbreak affecting a portion of your systems
- An external attack performed by a malicious party
When testing your plan or monitoring its real-life performance, you should use standard metrics to quantify the plan’s effectiveness. Some of the most common KPIs to track include:
- Mean time to detect (MTTD)
- Mean time to acknowledge (MTTA)
- Mean time to respond/resolve (MTTR)
- Incidents over time
- Total downtime
Create watertight incident response plans with Vanta
Effective incident management and planning requires the use of comprehensive software. If you need a reliable solution to keep your GRC workflows efficient, you can leverage Vanta. It's an end-to-end trust management platform that streamlines incident response planning alongside risk and compliance management.
Vanta offers a robust GRC product that automates numerous processes related to risk visibility, monitoring, and evidence collection. Some of the product’s key features include:
- Automated tests with custom controls
- Vulnerability management
- People and access management
- Over 375 integrations with popular platforms (including vulnerability scanners, security training solutions, and more)
Vanta offers a dedicated Policy Builder tool with templates to create standard security documentation, including business recovery and incident response plans. You can work on your policy with your team and get it reviewed and approved—all within the platform.
To discover GRC functionalities relevant to your team, schedule a custom demo today.
{{cta_simple7="/cta-modules"}} | GRC product page
| Role: | GRC responsibilities: |
|---|---|
| Board of directors | Central to the overarching GRC strategy, this group sets the direction for the compliance strategy. They determine which standards and regulations are necessary for compliance and align the GRC strategy with business objectives. |
| Chief financial officer | Primary responsibility for the success of the GRC program and for reporting results to the board. |
| Operations managers from relevant departments | This group owns processes. They are responsible for the success and direction of risk management and compliance within their departments. |
| Representatives from relevant departments | These are the activity owners. These team members are responsible for carrying out specific compliance and risk management tasks within their departments and for integrating these tasks into their workflows. |
| Contract managers from relevant department | These team members are responsible for managing interactions with vendors and other third parties in their department to ensure all risk management and compliance measures are being taken. |
| Chief information security officer (CISO) | Defines the organization’s information security policy, designs risk and vulnerability assessments, and develops information security policies. |
| Data protection officer (DPO) or legal counsel | Develops goals for data privacy based on legal regulations and other compliance needs, designs and implements privacy policies and practices, and assesses these practices for effectiveness. |
| GRC lead | Responsible for overseeing the execution of the GRC program in collaboration with the executive team as well as maintaining the organization’s library of security controls. |
| Cybersecurity analyst(s) | Implements and monitors cybersecurity measures that are in line with the GRC program and business objectives. |
| Compliance analyst(s) | Monitors the organization’s compliance with all regulations and standards necessary, identifies any compliance gaps, and works to mitigate them. |
| Risk analyst(s) | Carries out the risk management program for the organization and serves as a resource for risk management across various departments, including identifying, mitigating, and monitoring risks. |
| IT security specialist(s) | Implements security controls within the IT system in coordination with the cybersecurity analyst(s). |
Explore more GRC articles
Introduction to GRC
Implementing a GRC program
Optimizing a GRC program
Governance
Risk
Compliance
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