Incident Response Plan Template UK

Standard Operating Procedure: Incident Response Plan (UK Compliance)

Document ID: TR-SOP-IRP-001
Effective Date: 2024-05-22
Version: 1.0.0
Review Cadence: Annual or post-major-incident

1. Executive Summary & Purpose

This document provides a standardised framework for detecting, responding to, and recovering from security and operational incidents. It is engineered to ensure compliance with UK regulatory requirements, including the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. The purpose is to minimise downtime, mitigate data exposure, and satisfy reporting obligations to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) where applicable.

2. Scope & Prerequisites

• Scope: All digital assets, cloud infrastructure, and sensitive data residing within UK-based operations of Template Registry.
• Prerequisites:
  • Access to secure incident logging system (e.g., Jira Service Management/PagerDuty).
  • Pre-configured out-of-band communication channel (e.g., encrypted Signal group or dedicated Slack incident bridge).
  • Access to "Break-glass" administrative credentials.
  • Current copy of the Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) and Asset Register.

3. Roles & Responsibilities (RACI)

4. Step-by-Step Procedure

Phase 1: Identification & Triage

• Log incident ticket with timestamp, severity level (P1-P4), and initial impact assessment.
• Validate incident authenticity; rule out false positives.
• Determine if PII (Personally Identifiable Information) has been compromised.

Phase 2: Containment (Short & Long Term)

• Isolate affected systems from the network (VLAN isolation or cloud security group lockdown).
• Change compromised credentials and revoke active session tokens.
• Snapshot volatile memory (RAM) and disk state for forensic analysis.

Phase 3: Eradication & Recovery

• Patch vulnerabilities or remove malicious artifacts.
• Perform integrity checks against known-good baselines (Immutable Backups).
• Execute phased restoration of services.
• Monitor logs for 48 hours for signs of re-infection.

Phase 4: Post-Incident Review (Lessons Learned)

• Conduct "Blameless Post-Mortem" within 72 hours.
• Document the root cause, detection gap, and containment efficacy.
• Update the Known Error Database (KEDB) and SOPs.

5. Quality Assurance & Pro-Tips

• Metric Thresholds: Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) < 30 mins; Mean Time to Contain (MTTC) < 2 hours for P1 incidents.
• The "72-Hour Rule": Under UK GDPR, you must report a personal data breach to the ICO within 72 hours of becoming aware of it, unless the breach is unlikely to result in a risk to rights and freedoms.
• Pro-Tip: Always maintain an offline, physical copy of the incident response contact list. If your primary communication stack (O365/Google Workspace) is the victim of the incident, you will lose access to internal directories.

6. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: When should I involve legal counsel or the ICO?
A: Immediately upon confirmation of a data breach involving PII. The DPO must make the formal determination on notification status. Do not delay assessment to "gather more data."

Q: How do we handle forensic integrity during containment?
A: Always prioritise live response (RAM capture) before power-cycling or rebooting systems. If the device must be shut down, document the specific steps taken to ensure chain of custody for any potential legal proceedings.

Q: What is the primary indicator of a successful containment?
A: When the specific threat vector identified in Phase 1 is blocked at the perimeter and internal lateral movement logs show zero further egress attempts to command-and-control (C2) servers.