A guiding set of best practices can assist companies to design and implement a quality incident response programme that takes cloud and disaster recovery into account.

If in any doubt as to the necessity of an incident response (IR) plan, consider this statistic from IDC research that reveals that 80% of consumers would take their business elsewhere if directly affected by a data breach.

If a security breach is not properly handled quickly, the company risks losing business, with investor and shareholder confidence dramatically slumping after a publicised data breach.

According to Gartner, the increase in complexity and frequency of cyber attacks, combined with an overreliance on preventative controls, has heightened the need for the development of a clear computer security IR plan.