2 responses Nov 19

Charnjeet Work:

According to Ramachandran, “In an era where firms are being faced by the challenge of cyber-attacks, coordinating internal information and techniques to ensure that businesses shield themselves from external attacks is integral” (Ramachandran, 2016). Some of the measures that may be put include automating security keys and tracking responses that may allude to breaches. Companies, therefore, have adopted measures such as establishing joint responses with cloud providers, formulating recovery plans and educating employees on the need to work together to ensure that they can identify any irregularities in data transmission. Hence, the incident response in the cloud is an integrated effort between the companies, their employees, and cloud service providers.

One of the best practices that can be used in incident response is formulating recovery plans for firms. Regardless of whether a company is handling big or small data, they ought to have a recovery plan to ensure that they do not lose information. The loss of data could ruin the reputation of the company, and it could also result in financial losses. Hence, the recovery plan should entail an internal mechanism to provide a backup for the information that is in the cloud. According to Guerbouj, Gharsellaoui and Bouamama, “The company can also choose to incorporate additional providers to ensure that several secure spaces have their data. This allows a business to move and protect their data at their discretion” (Guerbouj, Gharsellaoui & Bouamama, 2019). Thus, building a recovery plan ensures that there is an alternative cloud with the same information, and it creates a continuous flow of processes in the event of a breakdown.

Establishing a plan with the cloud providers also ensures that there is an adequate incident response. Moving data to the cloud allows it to be safe, and it also creates confidence in consumers since they feel that their information is well protected. However, companies must agree with their providers on how to respond to breaches and threats. This allows for coordinated responses, and it creates an avenue for the appropriate management of different issues.  Therefore, coming up with ways to coordinate operations between service providers and businesses is amongst the ways to create incident responses in the cloud.

According to Kalaiprasath, Elankavi and Udayakumar, “Using capture and release methods is also an efficient incident response. In this technique, deriving the metadata from real-time activities ensures that a cloud service provider, as well as the company, can monitor what is taking place in the online space” (Kalaiprasath, Elankavi & Udayakumar, 2017). This method is effective since none of the parties must keep live streaming the online issues going on. The capture and release methods allow any threats to be flagged-off immediately they are identified. Hence, capture and release techniques are also integral in incident responses in the cloud.

Conclusively, it suffices to underscore that incident response in the cloud helps in safeguarding the data of a company. These policies help the company in having a good client relationship as well as reputation. Most of the ways that can be used to facilitate incident response are internal, and they involve integrating employee efforts and the provider techniques to ensure that the data is protected from any cyber threats. Therefore, methods such as establishing plans for moving the data to the cloud and formulating recovery plans for the same are among the best incident response plans that can be put in place.

References

Guerbouj, S. S. E., Gharsellaoui, H., & Bouamama, S. (2019). A Comprehensive Survey on Privacy and Security Issues in Cloud Computing, Internet of Things, and Cloud of Things.

Kalaiprasath, R., Elankavi, R., & Udayakumar, D. R. (2017). Cloud. Security and Compliance-A Semantic Approach in End to End Security.

Ramachandran, M. (2016). Software security requirements management as an emerging cloud computing service.

Naren Work:

Response Best Practices

Many people around the world have benefited from the transformations that advances in technology bring along. With more advances in technology, data breaches have become common. Therefore, developing a working solution through incidences response plans has been the only solution to counter the effects of data breaches. The incident plans are made to ensure that an organization has a layout of the steps to follow in a data breach occurrence. Even though the criteria that each organization adopts may vary, it is essential to ensure that the organizations use the best practice in ensuring data security and avoid losses. The best practices give an organization a basic Skelton of the required actions in responding to a data breach. These best practices include; 

Ensure that the response plan for incidences is in agreement with other policies of the business. It is most likely to find that the response plan overlaps with the policies and plans of the business in other sections such as the IT and HR departments. “For example, how you intend to recover from a data breach will also be discussed in your disaster recovery plan. As a result, you need to make sure the information in both plans aligns with each other” (Ohen, 2018). Therefore, the interrogational policies that aim at the recovery from a data breach have to be reviewed to ensure that the policies are conflicting but rater moving in the same direction for the achievement of a more similar goal. 

Prioritizing the most vulnerable data that is at risk of breach ensures that the available resources are properly utilized in responding to the data breach incident. “Ranking your resources enables your teams to prioritize remediation based on the severity of business risks, violations, and anomalies” (Badhwar, 2018). It is by prioritization where risks are ranked automatically under their severity and resources allocated on that criterion.

The establishment of the joint response action plan with the cloud provider. In the event of a data breach, there should be a clear definition of what the cloud provider is responsible for and what the business is responsible for. “Responsibilities and roles should be clearly defined, and contact information for primary and secondary contacts should be exchanged” (Bhargava, 2016). This helps prevent conflicting interest in the incidence management since each player will be allocated clear responsibilities to work on when dealing with the incidence occurrence. 

The adoption of a response plan that is comprehensive is crucial in preventing data breach consequences. The plan works by eliminating the security threats and improving security response through the identification of the data breach and properly responding to them. Applying the best practices in responding to incidences of data breach offers collaborative platforms for tracking the response process and makes automation of the key tasks in security.

References

Badhwar, V. (2018). Cloud Security Best Practices: Top 4 Tips for Incident Response Teams. RedLock. Retrieved from: https://redlock.io/blog/top-4-tips-for-incident-response-teams

Bhargava, R. (2016). Best practices for incident response in the age of cloud. NETWORKWORLD. Retrieved from: https://www.networkworld.com/article/3116011/best-practices-for-incident-response-in-the-age-of-cloud.html

Ohen, M. (2018). Seven Best Practices When Creating and Using an Incident Response Plan. ECC IT Solutions. Retrieved from: https://eccitsolutions.com/7-best-practices-creating-using-incident-response-plan/