Standard Operating Procedures as big piece of the cyber Incident Response puzzle

Preparing for cybersecurity incidents and responding to them can be a significant burden for any organization. On a daily basis, most security teams will commonly deal with numerous cybersecurity events, many of which will trigger some number of resource-taxing and time-consuming tasks such as gathering and vetting information, analyzing data, and generating incident reports.

It is for this reason that every tool, every solution, and every procedure that can help ease that burden is often more than welcome. Implementing Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) is one of the essential steps towards ensuring a more streamlined and effective incident response process, one that allows security professionals to focus on the more substantial and high-value activities, such as in-depth investigations and implementing improvements in the overall incident response program.

Coordinating Incident Response

Standard operating procedures are aimed at helping CSIRTs to follow the most effective possible workflow when dealing with cybersecurity events. A typical SOP should contain a list of specific actions that security professionals need to take whenever their organization faces a particular cyber incident. It ensures that all employees within an organization know their responsibility and what activities they need to take in the event of a cyber attack. For instance, an SOP might note at what point in the incident the CSIRT member is responsible for reporting data breaches to the Information Security Officer and where to submit incident reports in the aftermath of a breach. Further, the SOP might also state how to assign an incident severity level and where to distribute a list of recommendations or specific instructions on how to address a particular threat.

Another important aspect of an SOP is that it should ensure that all workflows and actions taken during incident response are in compliance with regulations that the organization is required by law to adhere to.

Orchestrate and automate the process

In order to be worthwhile and effective, cyber security teams and resources from an organization must adhere to SOPs and realize benefits from doing so. Some of the actions recommended or required by an SOP in a given situation may take up a large portion of the time and effort of a security team, so adopting a solution that can orchestrate and automate some of those tasks can go a long way towards realizing those benefits by saving time and cutting costs.

Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response SOAR platforms can programmatically handle some of those time-consuming manual tasks, such as generating and sending reports, thereby help drastically reduce reaction times. They can also help quickly determine the severity of an incident and the impact it has on an organization, freeing security resources to focus on the containment, eradication, and recovery activities the sop standard operation procedure requires.

In summation, security automation and orchestration platforms are crucial tools for ensuring proper implementation of standard operating procedures as a key piece of the cyber incident response puzzle.