Incident management isn’t easy. In fact, for most K-12 school districts, it’s an ongoing challenge.
Fortunately, you’re in luck: We’ve created a free-to-use cyber incident response plan template — made specifically for the K-12 school system.
This guide explains the importance of preparing for cyber threats and how you can best leverage our ready-to-go template. From start to finish, we’ll help you understand exactly what it takes to mitigate an attack every step of the way.
IBM defines the incident response process as an organization’s procedures for detecting and responding to cyber threats, such as a security breach, cyber attack, or insider leak. For K-12, the goal is to prevent cyber threats before they impact school districts, thereby minimizing the cost and disruption resulting from any that occur.
Incident response planning isn’t to be confused with disaster recovery planning. Although related, a disaster recovery plan is much more focused on the aftermath of an incident that physically damages the district, such as a natural disaster. By contrast, incident management is more closely related to information security (e.g. protecting sensitive data).
An incident response plan (or IR plan for short) is a formal document specifying exactly how different cyber threats should be handled. Having an IR plan can help reduce the effects of a security incident and, in turn, limit operational, financial, and reputational damage.
Incident response planning establishes the appropriate workflow for mitigating risk, clearly defining each step in the cyber incident lifecycle. It also standardizes procedures needed to do the following:
An effective cyber incident response plan is essential to K-12 data security. Not only can it help safeguard against attack, but it also helps restore affected systems faster, avoid regulatory fines, and dodge costs associated with breaches. In fact, according to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach 2022 Report, organizations with incident response teams and regularly tested plans saved, on average, over $2.5 million in costs per security breach.
An incident response plan template is a comprehensive checklist that describes the steps and actions required to detect a security incident, understand its impact, and control the damage. Templates provide a general framework that can be adapted to a specific organization.
There are many templates already available online, but none are tailored to the needs of a K-12 school district. That’s why we at ManagedMethods developed our own. Using our document can help you save scarce time and energy building an IR plan from scratch, allowing you to jumpstart incident management and better protect student data.
Let’s dive into the specifics of our incident response plan template and how each component works in detail.
The incident response team is one of the most important aspects of any IR plan. Ideally, the team should include cross-departmental stakeholders to ensure a district-wide cohesive approach throughout the incident response lifecycle
As outlined in the template, you should recruit and designate the following roles:
Additionally, when creating an IR plan, you should discuss the roles that administrators, IT staff, teachers, and students/parents play in incident management. For instance, school leaders may be involved in reporting the incident to law enforcement. On the other hand, students and staff are in position to report suspected threats by contacting designated individuals.
The incident response process is typically broken down into four parts. As defined by the template, the IR plan must establish procedures at each step, including:
Organizations often make the mistake of treating every security breach the same. In reality, some are far worse than others, and should be managed as such. This is where classification comes into play.
Much like data classification, this is a key step in categorizing cyber threats based on their severity. In this case, severity is a measure of how damaging it would be if an attack compromised any given system. For example, severity levels might look like this:
Keep in mind that sometimes an incident can start off as a low priority but evolve into something greater. That’s why your IR plan should also have escalation procedures that define criteria for reclassifying ongoing incidents. These ensure everyone stays on the same page and treats the event with the attention it deserves.
Speaking of staying on the same page, communication is crucial to incident response. A lot can go wrong over the course of an evolving threat event, which means all internal team members have to know what’s happening in real time. This allows them to troubleshoot on the fly, coordinate responses, and minimize confusion.
What’s also important is to know when external stakeholders — regulatory agencies, parents, guardians, etc. — have to be informed. Remember, states have varying requirements when it comes to breach notification laws. Some also have much more rigorous data privacy regulations. Decide when exactly it’s appropriate to notify authorities and when it’s safe to wait.
Additionally, it’s best practice to maintain primary and secondary communication channels. Although uncommon, it’s possible that a cyber attack impacts primary channels and renders them useless.
Digital literacy is a tentpole of the modern K-12 school system. That said, not everyone is up to date on the latest trends and best practices in the world of good cyber hygiene. According to a recent government report, many school security teams lack formal training.
So, your IR plan must include procedures for developing cybersecurity training and awareness programs — not only for students, but staff members and parents, too. Provide regular training sessions on basic password security, data protection, and the dangers of unsafe internet browsing. We recommend teaching students how to spot phishing scams, malware attacks, and other cyber threats so they can steer clear of digital harm on their own.
Incident management is a team effort. It requires all hands on deck to do their part and protect the school district from harm of any shape or kind.
As previously mentioned, the last phase of the incident response process involves looking back at your performance. This helps you understand what worked, what didn’t, and what can be improved upon in the future.
Of course, this stage also depends on having actionable feedback in the first place. But where do you find it? Let’s take a look at a few ways you can gain valuable insight and improve the IR plan:
Next time you find yourself chasing down a security breach, you’ll wish you had an effective IR plan on your side. So, why not get ahead of the curve and kickstart your incident response planning today?
With our cyber incident response plan template in hand, you’ll be able to streamline incident management, protect sensitive data, and foster a culture of continuous improvement.
Download the ManagedMethods Cyber Incident Response Plan Template to get started.