Contingency Planning: What went wrong (or right)?

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The topic of this week is "planning for security". We cannot overemphasize the importance of planning in information security. We need to start with a plan, a security policy, to be more specific, at first, then continue with more detailed plans, like security blueprints. Your organization should have a contingency or a fallback plan in case you face disruptions/interruptions in any of the business components. For immediate response you should have an Incident Response Plan (IRP) to guide your employees and customers throughout that incident/crisis period. For the aftermath and tactical controls you need a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP). Finally for the long-term or strategic solutions, you need a Business Continuity Plan (BCP). The NIST special publications especially SP 800-53 and SP 800-18, and also 800-34 or 800-61 as well as ISO 27000 standards can be used as references to setup all the aforementioned security plans. Please review the definition/description of these plans and also the referred standards in Planning for Security. Make sure to include all of your references (APA format).

  1. Review the text in conjunction with a Web search for sample IRP/DRP/BCPs. Based on your research, identify at least three specific steps/principles/practices you think common in all plans. If you think some items are more important than others, please share your thoughts also.
  2. Find and describe an incident (e.g., security breach, Distributed Denial of Service, etc.) that occurred recently to an organization (Note: It could be your current or prior employers.)
    • Any particular aspect about this incident you think is interesting?
    • Can you find any information about this organization’s IRP or DRP or BCP?
    • Which indicators would cause someone to think that an incident might have occurred?
    • What strategy should (or did) the organization take to contain the incident? Do you think it’s effective? Why or why not?
    • What could be done to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future?