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Running Head: CLOUD INCIDENT RESPONSE BEST PRACTICES 1

CLOUD INCIDENT RESPONSE BEST PRACTICES 5

Cloud Incident Response Best Practices

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Introduction

In today’s world, downtime costs for data center dependent businesses are rising at a very high rate. When downtime costs are very high, you as a business must find ways to manage incidents and mitigate risks effectively and quickly. A good incident practice works underground to ensure the issues are resolved faster so that communication performance and to ensure that the development continues to operate undisturbed. In this study, we will discuss the importance of cloud incident management and the cloud incident response best practices you can apply to ensure the systems run smoothly. A Cloud incident is an unplanned interruption or reduction of the quality of an IT service. In this current world, downtime costs are on the rise; hence businesses need to invest in an effective cloud incident practice. Cloud incidences often affect downtime, performance, and security; we need to have a cloud incident practice that responds to these issues swiftly (Gupta, 2019).

Practices to respond to cloud incidences

Put a process in place before the incident happens-It’s not easy to predict every incident that is going to happen, but it is best to be prepared beforehand. Come up with playbooks for standard procedures for responding to these incidents. Responding to an incident beforehand helps you resolve the incoming incidents faster, improve external and internal communications, reduce losses, and promote a continuous learning environment. Update your processes regularly to counter the incidences first hand when they occur. Also, make sure that all the earners have access to training guidelines to know what to do when an incident happens (Gilchrist, 2019).

Invest in the right tools-Invest in the right cloud incident management tools because cloud architecture is very large and complex and has many parts to monitor and track to respond to the incidences. Always automate your system, including any mundane and repetitive tasks that may end up taking valuable time and attention. Automation of the cloud system helps relieve the people in charge of the additional and unnecessary noise, thus helping everyone focus on the important tasks at hand (Rosenthal et al., 2011).

Over communicate-In cloud incidents response, there is nothing as too much communication. To ensure that everyone is on the same page, take advantage of the incident response playbooks, messaging scripts, and process flows. Log and categorize every incident by keeping clear documentation. Create a status page to track incident updates if you need to communicate with many people. By mapping out roles, responsibilities, communication channels, and expected processes, communication becomes easier, and everything falls right into place (Singh, 2016).

Access impact and prioritize risks-Immediately an incident is detected; you need to come up with swift decisions. You need to ask yourself some questions like What is the risk? Which of the risk is important to address? Who does it impact most? As the business owner, you will need to answer these questions to mitigate risks and reduce the business’s disruption. Access the impact and prioritize risks using key monitoring systems and escalation so s to determine your response to the incoming risk. It is important to define your priority and severity levels before an incident happens so that if it happens then, the IT guys can quickly access risks in the heat of the moment (Billboard, 1999).

By using diagrams-Cloud architecture is complex; hence most security incidents may often go undetected. Use diagrams to outline the incident response processes and steps each team needs to do to improve the chain of communication. Create a map of the cloud architecture so that it gets easier to understand the cloud environment and how every component works. Diagrams make it easier to see insights and recommendations from other people and confirm what the other environments look like (World Meteorological Organization, 1954).

Conclusion

Like every other cloud application security practice, cloud incident response is also bound to be a shared responsibility. Planning ahead of a cloud incident is vital to have the right tools, contacts, and practices in place. It’s very important to have an incident response platform that can enable internal and external environment collaboration, automate key security tasks, track incident response practices, and respond to incidences swiftly ( Technical note, 1954).

References

Billboard. (, 1999).

Gilchrist, A. (2019). Google cloud platform an architect’s guide. Alasdair Gilchrist.

Gupta, B. (2019).  . IGI Global.

Rosenthal, R. A., Zenilman, M. E., & Katlic, M. R. (2011). Principles and practice of geriatric surgery. Springer Science & Business Media.

Singh, N. N. (2016).  . Springer.

Technical note. (, 1954).

World Meteorological Organization. (, 1954). Technical note – World meteorological organization.