What is the purpose of incident response planning?

The purpose of incident response planning is to prepare for, respond to, and recover from security incidents effectively. This involves establishing protocols and procedures that guide an organization in managing and mitigating the impact of security events. A well-structured incident response plan helps ensure that when an incident occurs, the organization's response is timely and organized, which minimizes damage and facilitates recovery.

An effective incident response plan typically includes components such as identifying potential incidents, defining a response team, outlining communication strategies, and establishing recovery procedures. This proactive approach not only helps to protect the organization’s assets and data but also enables continuous improvement in security measures by analyzing incidents post-event.

While developing new security software solutions, creating budgets for expenditures, or improving networking capabilities may all be important aspects of an organization's cybersecurity strategy, they do not directly address how to respond to security incidents when they happen. Incident response planning specifically focuses on the preparation and management of actual security incidents, making option B the most accurate and relevant answer.