Today, it takes an average of 277 days to identify and contain a single attack, according to research from IBM and Ponemon Institute.
Improving response times requires streamlined, secure collaboration and coordination amongst several different—often siloed—parts of an organization. If IT, security, legal, communications, and other business units can break these silos and work more closely together they’ll be able to respond more effectively and efficiently. This can ultimately save businesses money and mitigate reputational damage and help government agencies limit the potential blast radius of a cyberattack.
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Fortunately, it is possible to substantially shorten the time it takes to respond to and successfully contain a cybersecurity incident. Organizations can implement a coordination platform that fosters secure, efficient, and transparent collaboration among incident response team members. They can also create digitized playbooks that add transparency and automation to the response process, making it run like clockwork.
Fostering communication and collaboration between incident response teams
Cybersecurity incidents often do not only impact one or two business units within an organization, but the fallout can often impact most if not all departments. Effective incident response requires the combined efforts of many people, all with different roles, to collaborate as efficiently as possible to minimize the potential for harm.
The problem lies with the operational silos. These units likely have their own channels in the company messaging applications and online file storage systems, and may not even work together daily. However, teams from across the organization need a common platform that gives them complete visibility into the response process, allows them to securely communicate with other teams, and more.
The platform should be a place where incident response teams can go to get the most up-to-date information and communicate with teams about the next steps. For example, easy access to event timelines, threat intelligence, and cross-team communication tools like chat and video calls can significantly increase response speed and efficiency. Such platforms should also have out-of-band capabilities to navigate incidents impacting core infrastructure.
A collaboration platform with the ability to be deployed either on-premises or in the cloud aligns the incident communication with the organization’s security and compliance requirements. While on-premises deployments may offer better protection for sensitive data and give teams the ability to communicate in real-time with minimized risk of data leakage, cloud deployments can reduce the operational burden and support business continuity for critical workflows during major incidents affecting on-premises infrastructure.
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Automating a coordinated incident response with digital playbooks
Communication and collaboration are only as effective as the plans and infrastructure around them. Many organizations have developed emergency cybersecurity response plans that outline procedures for analyzing and responding to an incident. However, many of these plans are not updated regularly. Worse, they may be hard-to-find and aren’t automated. These common approaches, in turn, become liabilities because of their inhibition of fast and efficient responses.
Compounding the problem is the fact that traditional incident response involves an array of tools and manual spreadsheets to keep track of everything that’s happening. It’s a slow and inefficient method that makes it difficult for stakeholders to know who’s doing what and when.
Digital “playbooks” are a more effective option. They effectively digitize a cybersecurity response plan, incorporating elements of strategic and tactical documentation, delineating individual roles and responsibilities, and more. But they also go even further by using a checklist style of automation that alerts each team member when their services are required.
Digitizing emergency response plans makes it easier for all stakeholders to stay connected and informed throughout the crisis. Stakeholders have access to their playbook wherever they are and can use the built-in collaboration platform to communicate in real time with all team members across the organization.
Further, digital playbooks can be easily updated and revised as threats, security policies, and even personnel change. They are living documents that evolve with the needs of their organizations and can be updated as circumstances evolve for specific incidents.
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Laying a foundation for cybersecurity resiliency
Digital playbooks and a central collaboration platform bring order to chaos and help organizations shorten the time from incident identification to containment. They also lay the groundwork for ongoing cybersecurity resilience.
Retrospectives are key parts of any cybersecurity incident response. Teams must be able to look back on what they did to determine what went wrong, what went right, and what can be improved. Only then can they build a cyber-resilient culture that allows them to not only prevent but proactively prepare for, respond to, and recover from future threats.
Automating the incident response process makes this much easier to do. Everything is automatically documented, allowing teams to make accurate, data-backed assessments that can be used to modify and streamline their incident response processes. With each incident and adjustment, the organization will become more adept at responding to attacks. They’ll be able to resolve issues faster and more accurately.
The more organized information teams collect, the more they’ll learn, not just about their adversaries, but about themselves, too. They’ll understand how what they did staved off potential disaster—or, in unfortunate cases, how their actions may have contributed to an ultimately unsuccessful effort. Whatever knowledge they glean, they can use that as power to better their efforts and, in the words of the World Economic Forum, “make cyber resilience a business priority.”
Moving beyond incident response
Of course, collaboration platforms and digital playbooks aren’t just useful for cybersecurity. There are many other everyday use cases. For example, organizations can also use these solutions to improve productivity and workflows during product launches, while working on new applications or features, and so forth. Anything that involves a group of diverse teams across the organization or involves rote and repetitive tasks is fair game.
That being said, the solutions truly shine when organizations are dealing with particularly complex security incidents. Having a place to securely collaborate and share information is critical for aligning teams, streamlining productivity, and quickly and effectively responding to attacks. Combining that space with automated digital playbooks increases the speed of incident response even more and brings everyone together for a common goal: shut down the threat and turn the tide against would-be attackers.
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