Studies show that more than 60% of organizations have experienced a cyber attack. Yet a much smaller percentage believe they are prepared to handle an attack if one were to happen to their business. Unfortunately, not being prepared for this common occurrence can negatively impact a business in many ways. Crafting an incident response plan (IRP) is critical to protect your business.

According to IBM, the cost of a data breach reached $4.88 million in 2024 , a 10% increase from the previous year. These costs include regulatory fines, operational downtime, sending notification letters, lost customers and the money needed to hire extra customer service reps to answer inquiries.

The sooner an IT support team can identify and respond to an incident, the more likely it will be to either stop the breach from occurring or significantly limit its severity. This can save organizations money and time. It can keep your organization from experiencing too much downtime and losing sales and customers. It can also restore customers’ faith that your organization knows how to handle a breach.

The key to a quick response is already having an incident response plan in place that allows your IT team to know what specific actions to take. In this way, an IRP can save your organization from months or even years of loss.

An IRP is a document that outlines what your organization will do to monitor and respond to technology threats. Your IT team needs to know a few important things to develop an IRP that will work effectively when you need it most.

It’s important for your IT team to know your organization’s vulnerabilities and how hackers might initiate an attack. Make sure to examine both your managed cloud solutions and on-premise infrastructure.

Understanding possible cybersecurity scenarios allows the team to plan how they might detect an attack in each case and what tools they would need to respond quickly to a threat. As hacker tactics evolve over time, these scenarios should be periodically updated to reflect the latest threats.

The tech support team does not develop a good IRP alone. Instead, everyone from human resources to public relations to the legal department should be involved. Should there be a data breach, all departments will need to do their part to mitigate fallout.

They may need to know how to report the breach, write effective notices to customers, handle media inquiries and re-train employees on how to avoid errors that lead to these types of incidents.

Preparation is key if you want your organization to be able to handle a data breach. As a premier managed service provider (MSP), we want to help those who are unsure where to start. Our IT consulting experts have created an incident response plan guide to help your business prepare for today’s biggest threats. Download today to make sure you include all of the important steps when developing your IRP.

Download our Incident Response Planning Document

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