Small Business Incident Response Plan: 7 Steps to Be Ready
Key Takeaways A plan tells your team exactly what to do when an attack happens Small businesses are regular targets, not exceptions Assign clear roles and keep phone numbers offline Write short playbooks for your most likely threats Know your state’s breach notification deadlines Test the plan at least once a year It’s Monday morning. Your front desk can’t log in, files have strange extensions, and a ransom note sits on the shared drive. Who do you call first? Should you unplug everything? Do you have to tell your customers? If nobody on your team can answer in under a minute, you need a small business incident response plan . It takes a few focused hours to build, not a big budget. What Is an Incident Response Plan? An incident response plan is a written playbook for a cyberattack, data breach, or system failure. It assigns roles, lists the steps to contain damage, and explains how to recover and communicate. Think of it like a fire evacuation plan: nobody should be guess...