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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteUse SharePoint as a governed home for approved response procedures and coordination records—not as the incident response system itself. A workable plan names who can make containment and recovery decisions, connects cyber actions to safe continuity of essential operations, and keeps critical instructions and contacts available if SharePoint or Microsoft 365 is impaired. Build it around your actual deployment, sector rules, and jurisdiction rather than relying on a generic plan.
What a critical infrastructure response plan needs to cover
A SharePoint incident response plan is the set of procedures, ownership rules, and fallback arrangements that help your organization respond to cyber incidents involving SharePoint, Microsoft 365, or connected systems. It should also cover incidents that disable the response workspace itself.
For critical infrastructure, cyber containment cannot be separated from operational continuity. A step that limits an intrusion may also interrupt an essential service or affect safety. CISA and interagency guidance therefore emphasizes exercising incident, resilience, and continuity plans and minimizing gaps between IT and operational technology (OT) security coverage. Integrate this plan with existing emergency, safety, and continuity arrangements.
Microsoft describes its security incident management approach as conforming to NIST Special Publication 800-61. Its incident response planning guidance also says mission-critical processes should be designed and tested to keep a minimum viable business functioning during information-system impairment. Those principles are useful, but your plan must reflect your own service configuration and operating obligations.
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How to create the plan in SharePoint
- Set scope and assumptions. Record whether you use SharePoint Online as part of Microsoft 365, SharePoint Server, or both. Identify the responsible business and technical owners, response sites, identity provider, connected applications, logging and security tools, data classes, external providers, and IT/OT dependencies. Mark mission-essential services and the functions that must continue during outage or isolation.
- Assign command and decision authority. Name a lead and backups, define escalation and handoff rules, and decide in advance who may authorize high-impact actions.
- Govern the response workspace. Set its owners, membership, emergency access process, publishing rights, version and change control, audit expectations, retention rules, and evidence-handling requirements.
- Prepare an independent fallback. Store essential contacts, system topologies, build documents, and restoration instructions somewhere usable without the collaboration service or tenant identity system.
- Inventory assets and monitoring. Document what matters, who owns it, how it depends on other systems, which events are monitored, and how alerts and evidence reach responders.
- Write scenario playbooks. Give responders actionable steps for identity compromise, data exposure or loss, service unavailability, and incidents affecting IT/OT or essential services.
- Connect response to continuity and recovery. Specify minimum viable operations, alternate methods, restoration priorities, validation criteria, and who approves a return to service.
- Exercise, capture gaps, and update. Test both response and restoration, assign owners and due dates to findings, and revise the plan after exercises, incidents, and material changes.
Define command, decision rights, and staffing
List the roles needed for your operating model and identify a primary and backup for each. Depending on the organization, that roster may include:
- Incident commander or coordination lead and security operations lead.
- SharePoint/Microsoft 365 or SharePoint Server administrator, identity administrator, and relevant system and business owners.
- Operations or OT representative, plus a safety decision maker where operational actions could affect safe service.
- Legal and privacy counsel, communications or public information lead, executive decision maker, and human resources when relevant.
- Insurer, managed service providers, Microsoft or other vendor support, sector information sharing and analysis center (ISAC), CISA, and law-enforcement contacts where applicable.
For every contact, record a secure route, authority, backup, and handoff rule. Keep contact details in a fallback location too: a phone number inside the SharePoint site is of little use if that site is inaccessible.
Write explicit thresholds and approval authority for disabling accounts, restricting or isolating a site or tenant, shutting down a mission-critical workload, engaging outside responders, preserving evidence, issuing notifications or public statements, and approving recovery. Microsoft recommends deciding incident roles and significant decision authority in advance, including who can decide to shut down mission-critical workloads.
Plan for 24/7 coverage and surge staffing during a prolonged incident. CISA guidance for critical infrastructure calls attention to IT/OT coverage gaps and the need to identify response support; document how the team will sustain coverage and who can take over when primary responders are unavailable.
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Identify the authoritative response site or repository and document how responders know it is current. Define who owns it, who can read or edit it, who can publish approved changes, and how emergency access is granted and reviewed. Keep sensitive investigative material separated and access-controlled according to legal and organizational requirements.
Establish version and change control for procedures, an audit approach, retention and evidence-handling rules, and a process for checking that approved copies remain usable. Microsoft SharePoint governance guidance treats access levels, security and infrastructure policy, backup and recovery, and service expectations as governance responsibilities; apply those controls to the response materials rather than assuming a site is secure because it is internal.
Do not assume a cloud recovery process also applies to SharePoint Server. Microsoft’s SharePoint Online/OneDrive security documentation and its SharePoint Server governance guidance address different operating contexts. For each deployment, record who operates relevant controls, what logs and evidence your organization can access, how provider escalation works, who is responsible for backup and restore, and which identity and application dependencies affect recovery. Confirm those details against your actual service configuration and contractual model.
Keep the plan usable if SharePoint or Microsoft 365 is unavailable
Microsoft specifically recommends planning out-of-band communications for cases such as email or collaboration impairment, a compromised documentation repository, or lost phone numbers. Keep a controlled offline or otherwise independent continuity copy of the information responders need to act:
- Current primary and backup contacts, escalation paths, and secure alternate communication methods.
- System and network topologies, including relevant IT/OT interfaces and service dependencies.
- Build documents, restoration instructions, and essential response procedures.
- Minimum viable operating instructions and approved manual or alternate methods for critical functions.
Decide who can access and update the fallback copy, how changes are synchronized after service returns, and how responders verify that it is current. Test that responders can retrieve it without relying on the affected tenant, collaboration tools, or identity path.
Inventory assets, dependencies, and monitoring
Maintain an inventory that lets responders understand what is affected and what could be affected next. Include critical sites, libraries and data owners; privileged identities and administrators; connected applications and service principals; endpoints; cloud and network components; relevant logs and audit sources; vendors; and IT/OT interfaces.
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For each asset or service, record its business function, sensitivity, criticality, owner, recovery priority, and dependency relationships. Microsoft readiness guidance recommends inventorying identities, devices, data, applications, infrastructure, and networks, then rating assets by sensitivity and criticality. Include dependencies that could block restoration, not just the service named in the incident.
Specify which SharePoint and Microsoft 365 events are monitored, who receives alerts, how alerts enter the incident queue, how logs and evidence are preserved, and how responders retain access to audit and response systems during a tenant incident. Microsoft documents monitoring options including the Microsoft 365 Management Activity API and related identity and security tools. Feature availability depends on tenant configuration and licensing, so identify the capabilities actually enabled in your environment.
Write scenario playbooks responders can follow
Each playbook should identify its trigger and severity criteria, immediate safety and operational checks, declaration and leadership roles, investigation and evidence steps, containment options and their operational risks, contacts, communications, recovery sequence and validation, and closure and lessons learned. Keep actions specific to the systems and authority in your organization.
Compromised identity or unauthorized application access
Cover suspicious sign-ins, compromised user or administrator accounts, and unauthorized application access. State who assesses identity risk and authorizes account or application restrictions, how evidence is preserved, and what connected services and operational functions must be checked before access changes are made.
Malicious sharing or suspected data exfiltration
Identify how responders assess affected information, sharing paths, and potential exposure; preserve relevant records; restrict access when authorized; and coordinate legal, privacy, business, and communications review. Avoid public statements that disclose details useful to an attacker.
Malicious deletion, ransomware, or encryption
Specify how to identify impacted systems, isolate affected components where safe, prioritize critical services, and validate recovery sources. CISA’s ransomware guidance recommends prompt identification and isolation of impacted systems, prioritizing critical systems, following the approved plan, and coordinating notification and assistance. The particular containment action must be evaluated against safe operations and evidence needs.
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Loss of SharePoint access or response documentation
Rehearse tenant lockout, SharePoint or Microsoft 365 unavailability, and corruption or loss of the response repository. Include the independent contact and procedure copy, alternate coordination channel, provider escalation path, and the authority to switch to manual or alternate operations. Microsoft readiness guidance identifies authentication loss, tenant lockout, data loss, data leak, and denial of service as useful tabletop scenario types.
Incident crossing IT and OT or threatening essential services
Set a joint escalation path for incidents that cross the IT/OT boundary or threaten essential service delivery. State who can direct containment, who evaluates operational and safety consequences, which alternate operating methods are available, and how information moves between cyber responders and operations staff.
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For each critical function, state the minimum viable service, its manual or alternate operating method, and the point at which the function must be escalated to its operational decision maker. Define recovery priorities and approval authority before an incident forces trade-offs between containing a threat and maintaining service.
Document the restoration sequence and the conditions for returning to service. Include clean restoration sources, identity recovery, backup validation, staging requirements, dependencies, and validation checks. Test restoration rather than treating a backup or written procedure as proof that recovery will work. Microsoft recommends designing and testing continuity and disaster recovery scenarios for mission-critical processes and preparing immutable or offline information where appropriate. Consider unsupported hardware and dependencies that could prevent restoration.
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Containment choices should be assessed against threat reduction, mission and safety impact, evidence preservation, and reversibility. Record who weighs those factors and who approves an action that could interrupt an essential service; do not let a technical playbook silently make that operational decision.
Plan communications and notifications
Define internal leadership and operations updates, staff instructions, customer and supplier communications, public holding statements, secure channels, approval evidence, and a communications cadence. Decide who can approve each type of message and how the organization avoids releasing sensitive investigative details.
Identify who evaluates whether to contact regulators, law enforcement, CISA, sector partners, insurers, customers, vendors, or other parties. Microsoft incident planning guidance recommends making advance decisions about contacts such as law enforcement, incident responders, auditors, privacy authorities, securities regulators, and the board. CISA’s ransomware guide advises following the organization’s notification plan, keeping leadership informed, coordinating public information, and considering CISA, FBI, or other appropriate assistance.
Mandatory reporting thresholds and deadlines depend on jurisdiction, sector, contracts, data, and incident facts. Have counsel map the applicable obligations with the relevant regulator or sector authority; do not copy a generic deadline into the plan as if it applied everywhere. CISA materials cited here primarily address U.S. organizations, and some also include federal-specific playbooks, so organizations elsewhere should map their own contacts and requirements.
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Exercise the plan and keep it current
Run tabletop exercises for the playbooks above, including loss of SharePoint itself and loss of normal communications. A useful exercise tests whether participants can act, not just whether they can find a document.
- Can responders reach the independent contacts and procedures without SharePoint, Microsoft 365, or the primary identity path?
- Can the team identify the decision maker and backup for containment, operational continuity, notification, and recovery approval?
- Can the team maintain on-call coverage and coordinate IT and OT decisions over an extended incident?
- Can staff follow the alternate operating method while response and restoration proceed?
- Can responders retrieve and preserve the logs and evidence needed for investigation?
- Has restoration been tested, including its timing, dependencies, validation, and return-to-service approval?
Record each gap with an owner, due date, and evidence of closure. Update contacts, assumptions, inventories, and playbooks after exercises, incidents, and material system changes. CISA recommends maintaining and regularly exercising an incident and communications plan; Microsoft’s cloud security benchmark likewise recommends regular plan testing and retaining evidence and lessons learned.
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