How to act in case of cyber incidents

CMAE partner Club Support Inc explains how to respond to the cyber incident quickly and lessen its impact on your club.

What happens if you experience a cyber incident despite taking every precautionary measure? To respond to the issue quickly and lessen its impact on your Club, you must have an incident response plan.

In this short article, we’ll tell you about the NIST Incident Response Framework and provide you with a checklist of the steps you need to follow in case of cyber incidents. Hopefully, you’ll never have to use this information, but it’s always good to be aware and prepared because knowledge is power.

5 key phases of the NIST incident response framework

Identify

If you want to manage your cybersecurity risk, you need to have a comprehensive understanding of your tech environment. This function requires a Club to have visibility over its digital and physical assets, clearly define its roles and responsibilities, identify the risks it faces, and create policies and procedures to manage those risks.

Respond

When your Club experiences a cyber incident, you need to develop a response strategy:

• Pinpoint channels of communication between the pertinent parties.

• Gather and analyze case data.

• Carry out all necessary actions to end the incident.

• Incorporate any lessons gained into updated response tactics.

Detect

To swiftly identify cybersecurity incidents, your Club must take proper measures. You need to constantly monitor systems that recognize unusual activity and other risks to your operational continuity. A business must have complete visibility into its networks to anticipate a cyber threat and act appropriately in the event of one.

The best way to detect and prevent cyberattacks on ICS networks is through constant surveillance and monitoring of threats.

Protect

Your IT service provider should keep track of both digital and physical resources, provide awareness and training, safeguard data, and oversee network configuration baselines and operations during this phase of the incident response framework. It will guarantee that compromised system components are quickly rectified. To increase cyber resilience, you should also implement preventive technology.

Recover

Getting your affected systems back online following an attack or incident is the focus of the recovery phase in your incident response plan. This will depend on whether the systems’ flaws have been fixed and how your company plans to make sure they aren’t exploited again.

During this phase, your affected systems are tested, monitored, and verified. If you fail to ensure adequate recovery, you can have difficulty preventing another similar disaster in the future. We all know how terrible that can be for operations and reputation.

The checklist of how to act in case of cyber incidents

As you know, cyber incidents can happen to anyone at any time, and it’s essential to know how to act quickly and effectively. Here are some steps to follow in case of a cyber incident:

• Isolate the affected system: If you suspect that a particular system or device has been compromised, isolate it from the network immediately. This can prevent the spread of malware or other malicious activities.

• Contact the IT department: Inform the IT department of the incident as soon as possible. They will be able to assess the extent of the damage and take necessary steps to address the issue.

• Gather information: Collect as much information as possible about the incident, such as the time of the attack, the affected devices, and any error messages or notifications that you may have received. This can help the IT team to investigate the issue more efficiently.

• Change passwords: If your passwords or login credentials have been compromised, change them immediately. Use strong and unique passwords, and avoid using the same password for multiple accounts.

• Back up data: If possible, back up all important data and files to an external drive or cloud storage. This can help you to restore your data in case of data loss due to the cyber incident.

• Report to the authorities: In case of a serious cyber incident, such as data theft or fraud, you should report it to the appropriate authorities, such as the police or cybersecurity agencies. They can investigate the issue and take necessary actions to bring the perpetrators to justice.

• Educate employees: To prevent future cyber incidents, it’s essential to educate employees about cybersecurity best practices, such as using strong passwords, avoiding phishing scams, and keeping software up to date.

Cyber incidents can be stressful and overwhelming, but following these steps can help you to act quickly and effectively to minimize the damage.

MORE INFORMATION

If you want to ensure your club’s safety and protect it from all possible cyber dangers, delegate it to the experts. Club Support Inc has been working with clubs for over 20 years. We know clubs’ pains, common problems, and how to solve and prevent them.

• clubsupportinc.com