How can you ensure that your incident response plan is well-documented?

1 Define roles and responsibilities

One of the first steps to document your incident response plan is to define the roles and responsibilities of the incident response team, as well as other stakeholders and external parties. You should clearly specify who is in charge of leading, coordinating, communicating, and executing the incident response activities, and what are their expectations and authority levels. You should also identify who are the backup personnel, and how to contact them in case of an emergency. Additionally, you should document who are the other internal and external entities that need to be involved or notified during an incident, such as senior management, legal, compliance, public relations, customers, vendors, law enforcement, etc.

2 Establish incident categories and severity levels

Another important step to document your incident response plan is to establish the incident categories and severity levels that will guide your decision making and prioritization during an incident. You should define what constitutes a security incident, and what are the different types of incidents that your organization may face, such as denial of service, ransomware, data breach, insider threat, etc. You should also define what are the criteria and metrics that will determine the severity level of an incident, such as the impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability, reputation, compliance, etc. You should assign a numerical or alphabetical scale to the severity levels, and describe the implications and escalation procedures for each level.

3 Develop incident response procedures

The core of your incident response plan is the set of procedures that outline the specific steps and actions that your incident response team and other stakeholders will follow during an incident. You should develop incident response procedures for each incident category and severity level, covering the main phases of the incident response lifecycle: preparation, identification, containment, eradication, recovery, and lessons learned. You should document the objectives, tasks, tools, resources, and timelines for each phase, as well as the expected outputs and deliverables. You should also document the communication channels, protocols, and formats that will be used to share information and updates among the incident response team and other parties.

4 Create incident response templates and checklists

To facilitate the documentation and execution of your incident response procedures, you should create incident response templates and checklists that will help you capture and organize the relevant data and evidence during an incident. You should create templates for incident reports, incident logs, incident notifications, incident summaries, incident reviews, etc. You should also create checklists for each incident response phase, listing the key steps and actions that need to be completed and verified. You should store these templates and checklists in a secure and accessible location, and update them regularly based on your experience and feedback.

5 Test and review your incident response plan

The final step to ensure that your incident response plan is well-documented is to test and review it periodically and after each incident. You should conduct regular exercises and simulations to validate and evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of your incident response plan, and identify any gaps, weaknesses, or inconsistencies. You should also conduct post-incident reviews and analyses to assess the performance and outcomes of your incident response team and procedures, and identify any lessons learned, best practices, or improvement opportunities. You should document the results and recommendations of these tests and reviews, and update your incident response plan accordingly.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?