Here is a guide for an incident response plan template for small business. Since you are running a smaller business, perhaps your planning should be simpler.
So here is a guide on how you can start planning for your incident response plan.
To begin with, let us see the components of a good incident response plan.
Components of a Good Incident Response Plan
1. Data Classification:
Knowing the information security risks along with your data will help in prioritizing the response.
This will also help you in determining the response that needs to consider when identifying an incident. Perhaps you can use any one of the following classifications to classify your data:
2. Data Backup and Recovery:
An incident can happen at any time and you must have a backup and recovery plan for this eventuality. You can also use cloud backup and recovery solutions for this. You can also ensure that your business continuity plan covers this eventuality of data loss due to an incident.
So, a business continuity plan spells out what actions you should take. That is, in case of a disaster or emergency.
3. Documentation:
For any business, documentation is very important and there should be a communication process in place too. By doing so, the communication between all stakeholders is effective and efficient.
Moreover, information security policy documents, user manuals, security communication guidelines, all need to be in clear details. So that they are understood by everyone in the organization. And know how to respond when detecting an incident, or during an incident.
It is also very important to keep records of all legal communication such as legal warnings, breach notifications, etc., so that they can be referred to when necessary.
4. Testing:
It is very important to test your entire incident response plan once in a while. By doing so, it stays updated with the changes being made in your processes by way of new products being implemented, new user roles being created, etc.
Testing also makes sure that you are prepared for handling any sort of emergency so that there are no hiccups when you do have an emergency or an actual incident to handle!
Steps in Developing an Incident Response Plan for Small Businesses
1. Developing Communication Guidelines:
Communication plays a vital role in handling any sort of emergency or crisis well since it helps everyone engaged in handling it remains coordinated! So developing communication guidelines before starting on developing an Incident Response Plan document will help you decide what sort of communication needs to be used when and where.
This is an important step since it will help in making sure that all the stakeholders involved in handling the incident know the right thing to do and how to do it.
2. Developing a Data Classification and Backup and Recovery Plan:
You must have a data classification plan and a backup and recovery plan for your business. This will help you stay prepared for any sort of disaster or incident. If you already have these in place, then you can skip this step.
3. Writing out what needs to be done in case there is an incident.
4. Testing the Incident Response Plan:
Testing is important, so you need to test the Incident Response Plan document for small businesses before rolling it out across your organization.
An Incident Response Plan is an important document for any business of any size, so you need to make sure that it works well and covers all possible incidents that can occur in your organization.
