What’s the Difference Between Cybersecurity as a Service and Cyber Incident Response?

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It’s a question often asked: what is the difference between Cybersecurity as a Service and Incident Response?

The short answer is, Cyber as a Service focuses on the planning and preparation that happens before a security incident, and Cyber Incident Response is concerned with the actions taken immediately after a cyber-attack takes place (or is discovered).

Cybersecurity as a Service is an affordable yet comprehensive way for organizations to assess their cybersecurity program by having an unbiased third party identify its vulnerabilities and weak points. By knowing what areas are vulnerable, companies can address critical risks and create a plan to react to a data breach or other security incident.

Basic tactics of a Cybersecurity as a Service program include:

  • Cybersecurity Assessment, where your current security plan is measured against industry best practices. These frameworks may vary based on company, industry, and regulatory requirements.
  • Cyber-Attack Simulations are conducted with your Cyber Incident Response Team to find gaps in your response plan and improve your cyber-attack readiness, so you know what to do in the event of an actual security incident.
  • Security Plan Development, which creates or updates your current plan based on your cybersecurity assessment. Your plan includes the steps, processes, and personnel resources required to react to a security breach. 

Cyber Incident Response is the action taken immediately after a cybersecurity incident, data breach, or other cyber threat happens. Having an Incident Response Plan in place is essential, because a cyber-attack at your business can seriously damage your brand and reputation and expose your competitive advantages and intellectual property to the world.

At a minimum, Cyber Incident Response includes:

  • Immediate Incident Response, the initial steps taken to contain and control a security incident.  This includes assembling your Cyber Incident Response Team, identifying the cause of the breach, and containing the damage.
  • Network and System Restoration inspects your email system, web servers, eCommerce servers, and cloud applications to verify they are free of viruses and malware and that users have access so business operations can continue.
  • Damage Remediation confirms that all systems in your IT environment are operational and fixes any that were compromised to ensure they are secure.
  • Data Recovery ensures that all data located on servers, business systems, applications, and endpoint devices is accessible and operational. 

Cybersecurity as a Service and Cyber Incident Response are not mutually exclusive services; they both have their place in a solid, healthy cyber security program.

Fortress Security Risk Management is a global data protection company that helps organizations dramatically minimize their risk of disruption from unforeseen events like cyber-attacks. We offer both Cybersecurity as a Service and Cyber Incident Response services to help you achieve the highest degree of security and the least amount of risk, or what we call, SecurityCertaintySM.

If you’d like more information on our full spectrum cybersecurity services, contact us today!