The proliferation of cybercrime and data breaches continues to pose significant challenges for organizations in today’s digital world. While cyberattacks can create business interruption, the most advanced penetration methods and breaches often remain undetected on your network as they gather and capture critical information.
A cyber incident can put your company at risk of losing revenue, reputational damage, legal implications, and competitive disadvantage.
Some cybercrime statistics include:
- The global cybercrime damages are predicted to reach USD 6 trillion annually by 2021, up from USD 3 trillion in 2015
- Data breaches exposed 4.1 billion records in the first half of 2019
- 71% of the breaches are financially motivated
- USD 3.9 million is the average cost of a data breach
Thus, knowing how to respond to an incident quickly, appropriately, and effectively helps minimize the impact on your business.
As cyberattacks have become inevitable, developing a robust Cyber Security Incident Response Plan (CSIRP) is essential for organizations to build a secure, vigilant, and resilient environment.
Here are the crucial benefits of an Incident Response Plan (IRP):
4 Benefits of Incident Response Plan
1. Ability to Face Incident Confidently
During a cyber incident event, there will be overall panic among employees, security teams, and stakeholders. Having no security plan for your enterprise network can make the situation even worse.
Having a cybersecurity incident response plan with clear post-incident instructions, assignment of responsibilities, and incident response management guidelines will help you respond to the threat with ease and confidence.
2. Mitigate Damage After an Incident
When a cyber incident occurs, it can quickly lead to a business crisis, financial losses, legal implications, operational disruption, and reputational damage.
An incident response plan helps to quickly understand the nature of an attack, where and how it occurred, and what is at risk, so, the security team can take concrete and appropriate mitigation and remediation steps, thereby reducing the impact of the incident on your business.
3. Improve Cybersecurity
With the help of an incident response plan, your organization can lay out a proper plan and best practices for your network security. It helps you identify the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in your networks and the existing security strategies and develop remedies to improve overall cybersecurity posture.
4. Maintain Customer Trust
A cyber incident can cause severe damage to your business relations with your partners, customers, and investors. If the organization fails to communicate promptly with people involved in their business after an incident, it is likely that organization will lose customer trust and brand reputation.
According to a recent report by Deloitte, around 35% of customers reportedly gain trust in an organization if they are appropriately informed about a breach.
A robust cyber security incident response plan will help you communicate promptly and effectively with the customers and stakeholders during the unprecedented crisis.
In Conclusion
As cyber incidents continue to evolve rapidly in number and sophistication, preparing for the inevitable threats involves more than preparing to react. It involves the ability to respond effectively and recover thoroughly.
Therefore, merely having a cyber incident response plan is not enough. The security team must understand the plan and test it across the organization, including among business leaders.
