An incident response (IR) plan is a structured approach for handling security breaches and cyberattacks. A well-prepared IR plan reduces damage, recovery time, and costs.

The Six Phases of Incident Response

1. Preparation

Build your IR team and equip them with the tools they need:

Define roles and responsibilities
Establish communication channels (out-of-band)
Deploy and configure monitoring tools
Create runbooks for common incident types

2. Identification

Detect and determine whether an event is a security incident:

Monitor alerts from SIEM, EDR, and IDS/IPS
Establish severity classification criteria
Document initial findings

3. Containment

Limit the scope and impact of the incident:

Short-term containment: Isolate affected systems
Long-term containment: Apply temporary fixes while preparing for eradication

4. Eradication

Remove the threat from your environment:

Identify root cause
Remove malware and compromised accounts
Patch vulnerabilities that were exploited

5. Recovery

Restore systems to normal operations:

Restore from clean backups
Monitor for signs of persistent threats
Gradually return systems to production

6. Lessons Learned

Conduct a post-incident review within 72 hours:

What happened and when?
What worked well in the response?
What needs improvement?
Update the IR plan based on findings