In the context of cybersecurity, incident response refers to the tools, processes, and methodologies that businesses use to respond to security events. Examples of such events include sensitive data leaks; malware, ransomware, and DDoS attacks; and insider incursions.

Although responsible security teams always strive to prevent incidents from occurring in the first place, the reality is that no organization can be immune to a successful attack, especially as the area needing coverage widens with the rise of cloud adoption and cloud-specific threats.

There will always be unforeseen vulnerabilities or sophisticated compromises that can exploit even the best-laid defenses, as detailed in our newly released Hacking Google docuseries.

As such, building a successful incident response plan–Google, for example, has a detailed process in place–is what prevents these inevitable breaches from turning into business nightmares. By enabling teams to react quickly and effectively to attacks as soon as they are detected, incident response keeps systems and data secure, and allows business to continue operating, even when attackers manage to slip past defenses.

It is easy to assume that incident response plans can be formulated on the fly or that they involve only a handful of people. Yet lacking a coordinated plan, or relying on one that is minimally thought-out, leaves businesses at tremendous risk. It means that teams must waste precious time trying to formulate a response when a breach occurs—a task that can be particularly difficult and time consuming when the details of the incident are not completely clear.

There are many diverse parties across the organization who must be involved when an incident occurs, from incident specialists to forensic investigators to product engineers to (potentially) legal and PR.

In the above "Fastest Two Minutes in SecOps" episode, Chronicle Security Strategist Rishalin Pillay drills down into the role of the security operations practitioner during a security emergency. As you’ll see, these personnel are the ones responsible for the collection and analysis of the very data that will help identify suspicious or malicious activity and define the course of response action that needs to be taken. Pleae enjoy and click here to watch the full "Fastest Two Minutes" series.