3 Reasons Why You Need an Incident Response Plan

When reputation, revenue, and customer trust is at stake, it's critical that an organization can identify and respond to security incidents and events. Wheather a breach is small or large, orgnaizations need to have an incident response plan in place to mitigate the risks of being the victim of the latest cyberattack.

Incident response strategies and plans layout what define a breach, the roles and responsiblities of the security team, tools for managing a breach, steps that will need to be take to address a security incident, how the incident will be investigated and communicated, and the notification requirements following a data breach.

Below are the three most important reasons why you need an incident response plan today.

Protecting data is of importance both personally and professionally. By following an updated incident response plan, your team can proactively protect your data. Data in the wrong hands could be help for ransom when a hacker deploys ransomware, or when proprietary information is leaked to the public.

Protecting data assets throughout the incident response process includes countless tasks and responsibilities for the Incident Response (IR) team. Importance procedures include secure backups, leveraging logs and security alerts to detect malicious activity, proper identity and access management to avoid insider threats, and strong attention to patch management.

IDC found that 78% of consumers would take their business elsewhere if directly affected by a data breach. If a security breach is not properly handled quickly, the company risks losing some, or all of its customer base. A data breach doesn't instill confidence in your customers. 

It's also worth noting that if your company is a publicly traded organization, investor and shareholder confidence can dramatically decrease following a publicized breach. 

A thorough incident response proicess safeguards your company from a potential loss of revenue. According to the Ponemon Institute's 2023 Cost of Data Breach Study, the reported average cost of a data breach in 2023 was $4.45 million. The study also highlighted that the United States had the highest average cost per breach, reaching $9.48 million. 

Revenue is at stake with any impactful breach. While your organization may not be at the enterprise-level, your small to mid-size organization can still be greatly affected by a data breach. 

The faster your organization can detect and respond to a data breach or even security incidents, the less likely that breach will have a significant impact on your data, customer trust, reputation, and potential loss of revenue. If your organization doesn't have an incident response process in place, reach out to us today and we'll help support you in implementing a customized approach for your business.

 

 

 

 

Disclaimer: This post was originally published in 2023 and republished on June 19, 2025. Some details may have changed since the original publication; please explore our latest resources or contact our Cipher experts for the most current information.