In 2024, cyberattacks are inevitable but also stoppable. As the cybersecurity teams of government institutions, companies, and other organizations constantly create innovative solutions to prevent and reduce the impact of cyber threats, hackers are also working on finding better ways to attack. In this vicious cycle of cyber attacks, the resilience of institutions gains importance progressively, where incident response professionals play a significant role.
Incident response is how a company deals with a data breach or cyberattack. It’s all about quickly spotting the attack, lessening its impact, containing the damage, and fixing the root cause to lower the risk of future incidents. The global incident response services market size reached $24.9 Billion in 2022. Looking forward, IMARC Group expects the market to reach $72.7 Billion by 2028, exhibiting a growth rate of 20.6% during 2023-2028.
What does an Incident Response Team do?
An incident response team comprises IT professionals responsible for both anticipating and responding to organizational emergencies. Their duties encompass crafting a proactive incident response plan, identifying and resolving system vulnerabilities through testing, upholding robust security best practices, and offering support for all incident handling measures. Team members usually possess diverse technical skills, backgrounds, and roles, ensuring preparedness for a broad spectrum of unforeseen security incidents.
How to build an Incident Response Team?
Having an incident response team has a crucial place in an organizational structure for government organizations and businesses with valuable intellectual property. Usually, an incident response team can appear in three different forms: Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT), Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), or Security Operations Center (SOC).
What are the responsibilities of an Incident Response Team?
Since the risk profiles of the companies highly depend on the industry they operate in, specific skill sets within the incident response team may vary as well. However, broadly, the fundamental responsibilities of an incident response team encompass leadership, investigation, communication, documentation, and legal representation.
Leadership roles guide the overall direction and strategy of response activities, ensuring the team focuses on minimizing damage, recovering swiftly, and operating efficiently. While investigation professionals coordinate efforts to identify the root cause of an incident, emphasizing the collection of pertinent information. This includes details valuable for resolving the immediate issue and preventing future occurrences.
Communications and documentation roles manage both internal and external communications essential for incident response. This involves coordination within an organization’s teams, interactions with external stakeholders, and maintaining records of incident response measures and activities. Last but not least, legal representatives ensure that incident response activities align with laws and regulations, safeguarding the organization.
Hiring Incident Response Professionals
The incident response team will consist of a diverse group, including a technical team, cross-functional team members, and, potentially, external contractors. In the selection of specific team members, organizations should consider including:
1. Technical Team: This group comprises IT and security team members, along with other employees possessing technical expertise across the company’s systems. The technical team, including security analysts and threat intelligence experts, serves as the core of the overall incident response team.
2. Executive Sponsor: A senior executive should be included to provide oversight for information security and business risk management.
3. Incident Responders: These professionals are responsible for managing incident response timelines, overseeing ongoing incident management, assessing the scope and urgency of incidents, reporting on trends, educating employees and internal stakeholders, and potentially collaborating with law enforcement.
4. Communications Coordinators: This role involves managing internal communications related to incident response efforts. Additionally, public relations representatives are included to handle relationships with media outlets, affiliated business entities, and external stakeholders.
5. Digital Forensic Analyst: An expert in forensics, who may be an in-house employee or an external advising contractor.
6. External Consultant: A third-party expert in incident response, information security, or technical systems who can provide advice on specific cases.
7. Legal Representatives: This includes either an in-house corporate attorney or an external law firm hired to represent the company in case legal action becomes necessary.
The number of professionals on LinkedIn within this talent pool increased by 80% in 2023 and there is a high demand for hiring, but finding this unique talent is not as easy as it seems. Therefore, if you’re hiring for these roles, consider seeking professional help in finding the right cybersecurity talent.
Contact our cybersecurity recruitment experts, Calum Peacock and Strahinja Karanovic, to bridge the cybersecurity skills gap in your organization. If you need more information about our hiring processes, please contact us to see how PCN can leverage your team and business.
