Managed service providers (MSPs) know that security incidents are inevitable. They could be a phishing attack, a misconfiguration, or a system outage. Regardless of how one occurs, what truly matters is how you respond to and learn from these events. The key is to use a post-incident review (PIR), which will strengthen your security posture and refine your response strategies. Learn more in this month’s edition of Tip Tuesday.
The importance of a structured review process
Skipping a PIR may save time, but it leaves your business and clients vulnerable to repeat mistakes. The purpose of a PIR is to learn from previous problems so your team knows which steps to take for the next one.
This review process also prevents the exploitation of the same vulnerabilities, safeguarding your bottom line. In 2023, the average cost of cyberattacks on U.S. firms with over 1,000 employees was more than $53,000 per incident. Learning from past events keeps those costly mistakes from happening again, strengthening your cybersecurity strategy and improving response efficiency.
Tip Tuesday: Conducting a PIR
Conducting a PIR will help you extract insights needed to enhance your security posture. The following approach ensures you implement it correctly, boosting your overall cybersecurity resilience.
1. Assemble the right team
A PIR is only as effective as the people leading it. You need the right mix of expertise in the room to gain key information and implement improvements. This means bringing together security and IT teams and key stakeholders directly involved in the incident response.
Your PIR team should include incident responders, security analysts, IT administrators, operations or service managers, and compliance or risk officers. Involving this diverse group will help you gain a well-rounded perspective on the incident. It is also crucial to assign a review lead who will be responsible for facilitating the discussion and ensuring documentation of follow-up actions.
2. Document the incident timelines
Understanding what happened and when is critical to improving your incident response strategy. To this end, you should create a timeline to pinpoint gaps in detection, communication, and resolution.
Start by collecting logs, alerts, and reports from your security tools to reconstruct the sequence of events. Key points to document include the initial point of compromise, detection time, escalation steps, and remediation actions.
Tracking these details is more important than ever, given how much dwell time has improved in recent years. Over 12 years ago, attackers could lurk in networks for well over a year before being detected. Fast forward to 2023, and the mean time to detection has dropped dramatically to 16 days, which is a significant improvement. However, even a two-week window can lead to serious damage. By meticulously documenting timelines, you can analyze detection speed and identify opportunities to further shorten response times.
3. Analyze what went wrong
A PIR helps you uncover the root causes of an incident. It involves conducting a causal analysis, which includes reporting incidents, categorizing them, and analyzing the causes.
One area many organizations struggle with is insider threats. Despite the growing risk of malicious or negligent insiders, research indicates that less than 30 percent of professionals feel they have the right tools to manage these risks effectively.
If your analysis uncovers that an insider threat played a role, it is a sign that your detection and response capabilities may need improvement. Weak access controls, lack of employee training and insufficient monitoring can all contribute to these incidents.
Insider threats are only one part of the equation when addressing security gaps. You should also investigate broader issues—like a missed software patch or misconfiguration—to analyze what went wrong methodically.
4. Recognize what was done well
Realizing successful aspects of your response reinforces best practices and ensures effective strategies become standard practices. At this step, you should record key moments where your team performed well.
For instance, did your monitoring tools detect the threat early, and was the response team able to act quickly? When any good outcomes occur from mitigating the problem, document your successes to reinforce your team’s behaviors and decisions.
5. Extract actionable lessons and recommendations
Once you have analyzed everything, the next step is to translate those insights into actionable recommendations. One key area to consider is updating security policies and procedures. If there were gaps in your incident response plan, adjust protocols to streamline detection and mitigation. Other steps to preventing similar incidents can include enhancing security tools, strengthening access controls, and conducting regular incident response drills.
To make sure these lessons lead to real change, assign ownership of each recommendation. Whether updating a firewall policy or implementing a new security control, define who is responsible for execution and set deadlines.
6. Foster transparency and knowledge sharing
Building a culture of transparency is essential for turning PIRs into opportunities for growth rather than finger-pointing. Share findings across teams, whether through internal reports, debriefs or security newsletters.
Each method ensures that lessons learned benefit the entire organization. Team members will also feel encouraged to share their own knowledge during discussions, breaking down silos and improving overall security awareness.
7. Follow up and implement improvements
A PIR is complete once you translate the lessons learned into real change. To guarantee improvements, assign clear ownership of action items and set follow-up deadlines.
Check in regularly on programs to confirm that new policies, tools, and training initiatives officially address identified gaps. By making follow-ups a standard practice, you can turn incident reviews into a proactive strategy for long-term risk reduction and resilience.
Turning PIRs into a strength
Conducting a PIR is crucial to strengthening your MSP business for the future. Follow the right steps to create a proactive security strategy. Such measures will reduce risks and improve response times. More importantly, it will strengthen your team and solidify improvements into lasting change.
Read the Tip Tuesday series for more insights on how to better your MSP business.
Photo: Natee K Jindakum / Shutterstock
