Incident Response Plan Template for MSPs
A ready-to-use incident response plan framework for MSPs — preparation, detection, containment, eradication, recovery, and lessons learned.
Every MSP needs an incident response (IR) plan — for your own organization and as a template for your clients. HIPAA requires it. PCI-DSS requires it. Cyber insurance requires it. And when a real incident happens at 2 AM, you'll be very glad you wrote it down beforehand.
Phase 1: Preparation
IR Team: Define roles and responsibilities. Who is the incident commander? Who handles technical investigation? Who communicates with the client? Who contacts law enforcement if needed? Include contact information, escalation paths, and on-call schedules.
Tools: Ensure your team has pre-configured access to all necessary tools: SIEM console, EDR console, forensic imaging tools, isolated analysis environment, communication channels (out-of-band, in case primary comms are compromised).
Playbooks: Document response procedures for common incident types: ransomware, data breach, compromised account, DDoS, insider threat. These are your SOAR playbooks.
Client Communication Templates: Pre-written notification templates for different incident severities. During an incident is the wrong time to wordsmith a client communication.
Phase 2: Detection & Analysis
How incidents are detected: SIEM alerts, EDR detections, user reports, external notifications (vendor, law enforcement, threat intel). For each detection source, define severity classification criteria and initial response actions.
Analysis should answer: What happened? When did it start? What systems are affected? Is it ongoing? What's the potential impact? This determines whether it's a Sev1 (all hands on deck) or a Sev3 (investigate during business hours).
Phase 3: Containment
Short-term: Stop the bleeding. Isolate affected endpoints. Disable compromised accounts. Block malicious IPs and domains. The goal is preventing further damage, not cleaning up — that comes later.
Long-term: Implement temporary controls that allow business operations to continue while the investigation proceeds. This might mean deploying additional monitoring, restricting network segments, or implementing emergency access controls.
Phase 4: Eradication
Remove the threat from the environment. This might mean: reimaging affected endpoints, removing malware artifacts, closing the initial access vector, rotating all potentially compromised credentials, and patching the vulnerability that was exploited.
Phase 5: Recovery
Restore affected systems from known-good backups. Gradually reconnect isolated systems to the network. Monitor closely for signs of re-infection. Verify that all compromised credentials have been rotated and MFA is enforced.
Phase 6: Lessons Learned
Within 1-2 weeks of incident resolution, conduct a post-mortem. Document what happened, how it was detected, how the response went, what worked, and what needs improvement. Update playbooks, detection rules, and procedures based on findings. Share anonymized lessons with your team and clients.