Mini Bundle: Incident Response & Business Continuity - SME

The Mini Bundle: Incident Response & Business Continuity - SME provides a unified framework tailored specifically for smaller organizations aiming to achieve high compliance and resilience standards, without the complexity or personnel requirements found in enterprise environments. All included policies are classified as SME policies (indicated by the 'S' in their reference numbers, such as P15S, P30S, etc.), emphasizing their suitability for businesses without the luxury of dedicated IT, SOC, or CISO roles. The General Manager (GM) is the cornerstone of each policy, holding accountability and being empowered to delegate, oversee, and make policy decisions, which ensures the SME’s operations remain robust, legally compliant, and audit-ready. This bundle incorporates the Incident Response Policy (P30S), which establishes a clear, time-bound process for detecting, reporting, and acting on cyber incidents ranging from data breaches to malware infections. The policy eliminates uncertainty by clarifying that all incidents must be escalated to the GM and logged, with specific steps for response, recordkeeping, and notification, key for meeting GDPR’s 72-hour breach requirement. It features a user-friendly incident escalation workflow accessible for staff, external providers, and vendors, and lays out practical requirements for awareness training, simple incident logs, and cooperative investigation. The design directly fulfills ISO/IEC 27001:2022, 27002:2022, NIST SP 800-53, EU NIS2, and DORA obligations. Supporting this is the Evidence Collection and Forensics Policy (P31S). This ensures any digital evidence resulting from a security incident, investigation, or legal dispute is documented, preserved, and handled as required for audit, legal, and operational purposes. Chain of custody protocols are described in simple terms so SMEs can maintain legal defensibility and uphold GDPR traceability rules without specialist forensics personnel. Responsibilities, secure storage, and hash validation are clearly mapped to the GM and IT provider, allowing prompt and thorough documentation of actions. Business resilience is further supported by the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Policy (P32S). This outlines, in step-by-step language, how the organization must define its most critical functions, execute alternate workflows (e.g., paper invoices or remote communications during outages), maintain backups, and run annual continuity drills. Assignments for the GM, IT provider, and department leads ensure that in case of events such as flooding, ransomware, or utility failures, documented procedures and communications are available, and compliance with recovery objectives and regulatory expectations is maintained. Integral to this operational resilience are the Backup and Restore Policy (P15S) and the cross-cutting Legal and Regulatory Compliance Policy (P37S). The Backup Policy details backup frequency, storage, retention, and restore test requirements, with the GM overseeing policy application and incident integration (including failures or data breaches). It is tightly aligned with ISO/IEC 27001 and GDPR clauses calling for data integrity, availability, and recoverability. The Compliance Policy (P37S) provides a template for identifying, maintaining, and documenting all relevant laws, contracts, and obligations, replacing the need for a legal department with practical GM-led compliance, enforcement protocols, and reporting mechanisms. All exceptions must be logged and risk assessed, underscoring the SME-specific approach to resource management. Finally, the Social Media and External Communications Policy (P36S) closes the loop by mandating robust controls over all public-facing communication, ensuring brand, data, and reputational protection under regulatory scrutiny. This is operationalized with clear approval processes, content monitoring, incident escalation, and training, all centered on the GM or a designated communications lead. Collectively, these policies enable SMEs to present a mature, compliant front to auditors, customers, and regulators without the burdensome overhead of enterprise security frameworks. All guidance is practical, role-based, and easily integrated into the workflows of small and growing businesses, with explicit references to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and related standards at every step.