Before, During or After an Incident?

About this interactive

The Incident Management lesson starts with the stress of a system going down while users call in, and says a proper incident response plan reduces both the stress and how long the incident lasts. The plan covers three times. Before an incident: things set up in advance so that when something happens it is shorter and easier to overcome. Writing the plan, naming who leads, keeping contact lists current, testing backups, rehearsing, and having monitoring in place. During an incident: steps that make the response efficient and shorten it. Following the plan, containing the problem, communicating with users, recording what is done. After an incident: follow-up that improves the process and removes the issues behind it. Finding the root cause, a lessons-learned review, updating the plan, fixing the underlying fault. The lesson's own story is about the third part. A team that already handled incidents well focused on learning from them, both about its response and about the core problems behind the issues. It cost time on other projects, but the number of incidents went down and the team got more efficient. Ask when the task happens: while all is normal, while the incident is live, or once it is over.

What you'll learn

Place an incident management task in its phase: preparation before an incident, response during it, or follow-up after it
Explain how preparation shortens incidents and how follow-up reduces how often they happen

Aligned to

CompTIA Security+

4.8 Explain appropriate incident response activities.

Key terms

Incident Response Plan: An Incident Response Plan is a documented set of procedures that defines the roles, processes, and communication protocols an organization follows to detect, contain, eradicate, and recover from security incidents in a coordinated manner.
Preparation: The pre-incident phase of an incident response plan in which tools, procedures, and resources are put in place to minimize the duration and impact of future incidents.
Post-Incident Review: A follow-up phase after an incident is resolved in which teams analyze root causes, evaluate response effectiveness, and implement improvements to reduce future recurrence.
Lessons Learned: A post-incident review process that documents findings and identifies improvements to prevent future incidents and strengthen response procedures.
Root Cause Analysis: A systematic investigation process that identifies the underlying cause of a security incident or system failure, going beyond symptoms to prevent recurrence. RCA findings drive corrective actions and improvements to security controls.

Topics

Incident Response Interactive Categorize

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