What should an effective incident response plan begin with?

An effective incident response plan should begin with preparation steps because these steps are essential for ensuring that an organization is ready to respond to potential incidents before they occur. Preparation includes developing and implementing policies, training personnel, establishing incident response teams, and ensuring that the necessary tools and resources are available. This proactive approach helps to minimize the impact of a security incident by providing a clear framework to follow when a threat arises.

Preparation steps also encompass identifying critical assets, conducting risk assessments, and understanding the organization's threat landscape, which enables more effective and efficient responses.

Starting with preparation establishes a strong foundation for the subsequent phases of an incident response plan, such as detection, containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident analysis. This order is crucial because without proper preparation, even a well-designed response may fail or be chaotic, compromising the organization's ability to effectively mitigate incidents.