Incident Response Plan Template for Small Businesses

An incident response plan (IRP) is a written document that defines how your business will detect, respond to, contain, and recover from cybersecurity incidents. Every major compliance framework requires one: - FTC Safeguards Rule: Mandatory written IRP - NIST CSF: Respond and Recover functions - SOC 2: Incident management criteria - HIPAA: Required by the Security Rule - SEC Cybersecurity Rule: Incident disclosure requirements - Cyber insurance: Required by virtually all carriers Without an IRP, you're making critical decisions under extreme stress with no playbook. The average breach costs 33% more for organizations without an IRP.

1. Purpose and scope — Define what constitutes a "security incident" for your organization. Cover data breaches, ransomware, BEC, unauthorized access, and system compromises. 2. Incident response team — Name the people responsible: Incident Commander (usually owner/partner), IT Lead, Legal Counsel, Communications Lead, and Insurance Contact. 3. Detection and analysis — How will you detect incidents? Define monitoring tools, alert thresholds, and initial assessment procedures. Cyber Defense Agent's continuous scanning is part of your detection capability. 4. Containment — Immediate steps to stop the incident from spreading: isolate affected systems, disable compromised accounts, block malicious IPs. 5. Eradication and recovery — Remove the threat, restore from backups, verify system integrity, and return to normal operations. 6. Notification requirements — Legal obligations: state breach notification laws (30-90 days), federal requirements (HIPAA 60 days, SEC prompt), client notification, insurance carrier notification, law enforcement referral. 7. Post-incident review — Document lessons learned, update the IRP, remediate root causes, and run a follow-up Cyber Defense Agent scan to verify. 8. Testing schedule — Test your IRP at least annually through tabletop exercises. Document test results.

An untested IRP is almost as bad as no IRP. Test annually: Tabletop exercise — Walk through a realistic scenario (e.g., ransomware attack) with your incident response team. Discuss decisions, identify gaps, and update the plan. Scenarios to test: - Ransomware encrypting critical systems - Business email compromise with wire fraud attempt - Employee credential compromise - Vendor/supply chain breach - Insider threat/data exfiltration Document the exercise: date, participants, scenario, decisions made, gaps identified, and remediation actions taken.