Security Incident Management 101

Security Incident management is a structured process for identifying, analysing, and responding to security incidents. It comprises about eight key elements that work together to aid the protection of assets and maintenance of business continuity.

1. Incident Analysis deals with the identification, assessment and context-driven understanding of security incidents. It involves information collection about identified incidents, audits, scoping and triage of the incident. It is critical to the identification of root causes that feedback into the defence system to prevent future recurrences.
2. Incident Handling deals with the actual response. It involves a well-coordinated series of procedures involving incident containment, eradication and recovery — to ensure a cohesive and effective response. It also includes communication with key stakeholders.
3. Incident Management is the coordination and management of the lifecycle of security incidents. It encompasses planning, implementation, monitoring, and continuous improvement of the incident response procedures. It is more effective when supplemented with a robust incident response plan detailing specifics such as roles and responsibilities, communication protocols and escalation procedures. The Incident Response Plan requires regular reviews and updates to ensure its adaptation to emerging threats and trends and effectiveness.
4. The Incident Response Team responds to security incidents and typically includes representatives and an aggregate of skill sets from IT, security, legal, and other departments. A previous post discusses how you can build a technical team.
5. Incident Reporting is simply the documentation of security incidents via reports and registers. These documents are invaluable for identifying patterns and trends of security threats, assessing impacts, improving the incident response process, legal protection and fulfilling compliance obligations.
6. Incident Escalation speaks to the communication of security incidents up the responsibility and accountability chain, more especially when incidents pose significant risks and impacts on the business or are difficult to resolve due to their complexities.
7. Incident Classification deals with categorizing incidents by severity, impact, and other contextual factors. This classification helps to prioritize response efforts.
8. Incident Exercises (or Drills) fortify the overall incident management program. It helps to measure the readiness and effectiveness of your response strategy. Incident response drills simulate cybersecurity incidents and help in assessing preparedness, identifying weaknesses within the incident response plan, offering hands-on experience to security personnel and stakeholders, enhancing response agility, fostering seamless coordination, and ensuring compliance with incident reporting requirements.

A robust incident management strategy can go a great length in minimizing the impacts of security incidents and preventing recurrences.