What is an incident response plan?

An incident response plan serves as a documented strategy that outlines the procedures and actions to take when a security incident occurs. This plan is crucial for organizations as it helps to effectively manage and mitigate the impact of incidents, such as data breaches or system failures, ensuring a systematic approach to handling the situation.

By clearly defining the roles, responsibilities, and communication protocols within the organization, the incident response plan facilitates a swift and effective response, ultimately protecting sensitive data and minimizing potential damage. It includes various components such as identification, containment, eradication, recovery, and lessons learned after the incident, which are all vital for continuous improvement in security practices.

The other options do not align with the function of an incident response plan. Data recovery software is focused on restoring lost data, while internet speed strategies do not address security incidents at all. Similarly, guidelines for network design pertain to infrastructure setup rather than incident management. Hence, the documented process to handle security incidents is the fundamental purpose served by an incident response plan.