Aug 2023
The 3 Essentials To Look Out For In An Incident Response Partner
If we were in your shoes, this is what our cyber experts know you should look for. We're going to deep dive into what all great Incident Response partners do.
Head of Cyber ANZ
#1 – Your Organisation’s Different, Do They Truly Understand Your Business?
An exceptional Incident Response partner should not only consider the technical details of your organisation but within their onboarding and planning encompass a comprehensive understanding of your unique varied factors.
It is essential for your chosen partner to understand what is not only important to your industry and industry specific challenges but the areas and the challenges that are important to your organisation. What are the things you want to protect? What are your priorities? Your business goals?
After all, it’s not just about the tech. To truly build an organisation equipped to navigate the future and today’s cyber conscious economy - the human element and your operational workflows are just as crucial.
Every organisation is unique and requires unique and bespoke solutions. It’s imperative for your Incident Response partner to implement a bespoke plan. You wouldn’t apply the same approach to a healthcare company and a manufacturing business, would you?
#2 – The Technical Aspect
Even though we did just discuss how tech isn’t everything, it is still crucial that your cyber partner have exceptional technical knowledge, experience and are qualified to find the best solutions for your organisation.
Your partner should have cyber experts who have a diverse knowledge base like, information security managers, security analysists, security architects, system and network administrators, and enterprise architecture. The organisations experts should hold industry recognised credentials to ensure you’re receiving top-notch service.
Their availability and responsiveness are one of the most important factors to your chosen Incident Response partner. Do they have a 24/7x365 service to respond to any incidents? Adversaries don’t work strictly within business hours, so your chosen partner shouldn’t either.
#3 – End to End Partnership
Does your Incident Response partner provide end-to-end Incident Response? If you don’t know what that should include, check out the infographic below.
It’s imperative that from discovery & onboarding to post-incident your chosen Incident Response partner walks you through every step.
As we’ve discussed in this article, preparing and planning should encompass a full review of your cyber posture – across your entire organisation to identify your vulnerabilities and create a bespoke plan using a range of tools like incident playbooks which meet your organisation’s needs.
For the duration of the incident, your dedicated incident manager should be in constant communication with your teams (including third-party forensics, legal and insurance) to ensure the right messages are conveyed to throughout your organisation and your stakeholders. Your incident manager will work with your teams to create and implement communications plans which is invaluable during this time.
During the post-incident phase, your partner of choice should conduct thorough reviews of the incident, continue to work with your internal teams for constant communications and ensure a thorough report is completed with the next steps your organisation should take for continuous improvement.
Incident Response is an important component to any modern organisations' cyber resilience plan. The assurance that your organisation possesses a dedicated Incident Response partner and ally is an invaluable resource of not only cyber resilience but business resilience.
Find out more about Incident Response here and supporting articles below.
The Cost of Cyber: Can You Afford $3.35 Million? Incident Response: The Secret Weapon Against Cyber Pirates From Panicked to Prepared: Strengthening Organisational Resilience
Waterstons has 25+ years' experience across the UK and Australia preparing and protection organisations from cyber threats. We are committed to assisting all organisations to stay agile and prepared in today’s cyber conscious economy.
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