INCIDENT RESPONSE PLANNING
A cyber incident is going to happen to your organization. It’s not a matter of if, but when.
Are you ready?
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The size of your business does not protect you from cyber threats.
Cybercriminals frequently target small and mid-sized businesses because they have a limited IT staff, fewer security protections, and hidden vulnerabilities. They see these gaps as easy opportunities to launch attacks like business email compromises, credential theft, ransomware events, and data breaches that go unnoticed until serious damage occurs.
The key to limiting the fallout is how quickly you can recover. A strong incident response plan can get your operations back on track in days or weeks instead of facing months of disruption.
Cyberattack Recovery by the Numbers
What is IR? What is Incident Response Planning?
Both are important to protect your business.
Incident Response (IR)
Incident response is a focused, organized way to handle security threats after you detect them or fall victim to one. The priority is to limit damage, contain affected systems, analyze the details, remove the attacker, restore systems, get operations back on track, and conduct a post-attack review to build stronger defenses. The aim is to move quickly, reduce the fallout, and protect your business.
Incident Response Planning
Incident response planning is all about getting ahead of a potential security incident by putting a clear strategy in place before anything goes wrong. This plan spells out who is responsible for what, how communication will flow, and the steps the team will take when under pressure. It combines preparation, risk evaluations, scenario drills, and ongoing best practices to sharpen your response and keep things as controlled as possible if an attack hits.
Why Do You Need Incident Response Planning?
Because Every Second is Precious.
Benefits of implementing an IR plan
Limit Impact: When a security event hits, a strong incident response plan aligns your team, both inside your organization as well as outside partners. This concise plan serves as the blueprint for actions that need to be taken for each role.
Maintain Operations: The faster you spot and contain a cyber issue, the less downtime you will experience and avoid major interruptions to your day-to-day operations.
Satisfy Insurer Expectations: While not always required, most insurers expect you to have a written incident response plan and conduct tabletop exercises of that plan before they issue a policy or honor a claim.
Meet Obligations: Certain privacy laws and industry standards expect companies to have a documented plan in place for how they will respond to a security incident.
Preserve Trust: Clear and prompt communication to your customers throughout an incident is key to maintaining their confidence and trust.
Enhance employee security awareness: Creating and regularly practicing a response plan helps reinforce the importance of security to your employees and keeps them vigilant.
Axxys IR Plan
Data breach incident response planning stages
An Incident Response Plan works best when it’s put in place before a breach happens and includes every phase from preparation through post-attack adjustments. That’s why, at Axxys, our IR Planning strategy revolves around five critical stages.
Stage 1: Incident Preparedness
First, we assess where your business is most vulnerable, establish a list of critical assets, update systems, assign clear team roles, and refine policies so you are ready to respond quickly and effectively to any incident, whenever it may occur. Preparing for a potential incident starts with understanding your vulnerabilities and implementing strong security measures.
Stage 2: Threat Detection and Analysis
Speed is critical when a threat is identified. Our team traces the threat’s origin to understand the method of attack and determines the attacker’s intent. We document our findings and ensure clear communication with team members and stakeholders, so everyone is on the same page regarding the appropriate response.
Stage 3: Containment
It’s critical to contain an attack as quickly as possible so it will do the least amount of harm. The longer attackers have access to your network and files, the more damage they can inflict. As soon as the threat is detected, we isolate the compromised systems to prevent the issue from spreading further.
Stage 4: Response and Eradication
Receive engaged support for your desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile hardware. With all your devices fully supported and optimized, you’ll be able to sustain a higher level of business responsiveness.
Step 5: Treat and Prevent
After evaluating your assets and infrastructure, and identifying and prioritizing potential threats, our skilled security specialists will deploy IT resources to prevent breaches, design specific processes to ensure the use of best practices and ongoing compliance, and educate your team on identifying sophisticated threats before they can cause significant harm.
Stage 6: Feedback and Adjustments
After the situation is under control, we assess the incident, analyze what happened, identify areas for improvement, and address any weaknesses in the response. We then adjust the incident response procedures to ensure you are even better prepared when the next threat arrives.
If you don’t have an incident response plan in place or need to update your existing one, contact us today.
Axxys Data Breach Incident Response Planning
Capabilities and features
Annual Risk Assessment and Documented Security Policies
At Axxys, our Annual Risk Assessment takes a deep dive into your environment to uncover security gaps and build a plan to close them. We tailor the assessment to your business, looking at your data, hardware, software, network, employees, and third-party partners. We identify potential risks, assess threats and vulnerabilities, and analyze how your critical data is created, transmitted, and stored. The result is a clear, objective view of your security posture and a roadmap to strengthen it based on your needs, budget, and risk tolerance.
Annual IR Tabletop Exercises
Axxys’ Annual Incident Response (IR) Tabletop Exercises help your team put your response plan to the test before a real incident strikes. Through discussion-based simulations, we work with your stakeholders to walk through realistic scenarios, evaluate your readiness, and sharpen communication across your organization. The goal is to reveal gaps, clarify roles, and highlight opportunities for stronger coordination. Our team will update the incident response plan based on what is learned and provide additional training if needed.
PenTesting with Plan of Action and Milestones
During our annual Penetration Testing (or PenTesting), we implement a simulated cyberattack to actively test your systems, networks, and applications to uncover vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit. We identify weaknesses, recommend improvements, and develop a plan of action with milestones to address them. The real-world testing and action plan help close the gap against future threats.
Rapid Response Support
Axxys provides Rapid Response Support to help you take immediate action when a cyber incident strikes. Our team of certified security engineers delivers triage analysis, threat assessment, SIEM/SOC detection, and malware removal to contain and eliminate attacks quickly. From the moment an incident is detected through full system recovery, we are ready to guide, protect, and restore your operations.
Have You Already Experienced an Attack?
Speak with an Axxys certified security specialist immediately.
The Axxys Difference
At Axxys, we have the experience and tools to help you stay protected, from following industry best practices and being compliant to preventing issues before they happen and training your team.
- Risk mitigation done by security engineers with advanced specialist certifications. Certifications include CCNA Security, CISM (Certified Information Security Manager), CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional), CompTIA Security+, and CySA+ (CompTIA Cybersecurity Analyst +).
- Protected by good hackers with the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) designation. This certification reflects a strong understanding of how to assess system security by identifying vulnerabilities using the same methods and strategies as a hacker but in a legal and ethical way to help improve and protect your systems.
- SIEM/SOC detection capabilities. Axxys delivers nonstop protection with SIEM/SOC detection capabilities built to spot threats early and respond fast. Our platform pulls data from across your network and uses advanced threat intelligence to flag suspicious activity around the clock.
- Customized security services. Axxys Managed Security Plans are custom designed to match your risk tolerance and compliance requirements. Each plan supports your business needs and works either as a standalone solution or alongside our managed or co-managed IT support services.
- MSSP designation. Axxys’ Managed Security Service Provider designation highlights our commitment to advanced security measures. With proactive monitoring, risk mitigation, rapid incident response, and a focus on compliance, clients have constant protection and peace of mind.
- Security awareness training. We provide ongoing client training on various security topics like cyber threats, improve security practices, and minimize breaches caused by human error.
