5 Tips For Cybersecurity Incident Response

Experts and politicians agree that security and privacy incidents are a given. “Cyberthreats are an urgent and growing danger," President Obama said. He also mentioned that as the nation’s infrastructure goes online, cybersecurity has become “a growing public safety and public health” issue. And as the new cyber-risk handbook from the National Association of Corporate Directors puts it: “If a sophisticated attacker targets a company’s systems, they will almost certainly [be breached].”

According to some estimates, between  $9 trillion and $21 trillion of global economic value could be at risk from cyber attacks. Teams of cyber-attackers are using increasingly sophisticated tactics to deploy malware and mount multi-stage attacks that search for security holes until they find a way in. And they’re successful: The Global State of Information Security Survey 2015 by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that the total number of security incidents climbed to 42.8 million, a 48 percent increase from 2013.

With privacy risks on the rise, new regulatory requirements and enforcement programs, and new legal precedents for liability in cases of breach, corporate well-being in 2015 will depend greatly on how organizations respond to the inevitable. For these reasons, the most important focus for organizations this year must be on incident response. Organizations must present a unified front against privacy and security threats...