Tips to Identify and Prepare for a Cyber Incident

Encountering problems or obstacles is normal for every organization and as the world is going digital, there would be a greater chance for organization to experience a cyber breach. However, it would be difficult for organization to react when an unexpected situation occurs and normally, organization wants to resolve the issue as quickly as possible so that the business can get back to normal.

How to Identify a Cyber Incident

In order to be able to identify cyber incident, organizations need to have strong internal IT policies and an advanced monitoring. When cyber incidents occur, the ability to accurately identify and classify incidents has become a key to respond incidents effectively with minimal impact on business operations.

The first way to identify a cyber incident is by finding out whether you are being attacked. There are several signs that could indicate a cyber-attack such as computers that start running slowly, unusual account activity, requests for unauthorized payments, and many more. After that, organizations should gather information about what happened along with the details of services or programs that are not working, time when the problem occur, and the potential business impact of the incident.

Last but not least, once the information of the incidents has been fully gathered, organizations could start developing an incident plan by ensuring to keep the important information in a safe place so that it can be used if the equipment is stolen or damaged by a cyber-attack in the future.

Ways to Prepare for A Cyber Incident

Cyber incident is stated as an unauthorized or attempted access to the IT system of an organization. The cyber incidents could take form of data breaches, malicious attacks, or simply an accidental event such as damage arise from fire or flood. Unforeseen events, both malicious and accidental, could occur in many ways. Therefore, there are several ways that could be implemented by organizations to prepare for a cyber incident.

First, identify critical systems and assets such as customers details, important documents, financial data, and others which are essential for the continuity of organizations. Then, put risk on the agenda. This means that organizations should create a discussion with every person involve in business as cyber risk should be a part of normal business. Lastly, by understanding what is important to business and open a discussion at management, organizations will be able to decide which part of business that need the most protection.

Conclusion

Cyber incidents could come from cyber breaches, malicious attacks, or could simply come from accidental events such as damage arise from fire or flood. Therefore, it is very crucial for organizations to prepare a cyber incident and identify it; thus, they can respond to incidents effectively with minimum impact.

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References

National Cyber Security Centre. (2020). Cyber Security Response and Recovery Small Business Guide Collection. National Cyber Security Centre, 4–8.