Incident Response Planning: Building a Playbook That Works

The Six Phases of Incident Response

NIST defines six phases: Preparation, Detection, Containment, Eradication, Recovery, and Post-Incident Review. Most organizations fail at preparation and post-incident review.

Building Effective Playbooks

A playbook is a step-by-step decision tree for a specific incident type. Build playbooks for your most likely scenarios first:

• Ransomware activation
• Credential theft / account compromise
• Data exfiltration alert
• DDoS attack

Testing Your Plan

Run a tabletop exercise quarterly. Assign roles, simulate a realistic scenario, and time your response. Unexercised plans fail in real incidents.