The incident response team has to be ready to deal with an incident at all times , be it hardware failure, a power outage, policy violation or a hack. Preparation includes: Establishing company policy to determine what counts as an incident Creating a response strategy to handle incidents based on impact Creating a clear communication plan to contact individuals within your organization should the incident require it Access control and the necessary permissions to deal with the incident Tools (hardware and software) required to handle the incident ready to go at any moment Documentation of past incidents, and an outline to create documentation of future incidents during the entire response cycle Incident response training to ensure everyone knows what to do when an incident occurs (including regular drills)

Cyber Incident response

Incident response services for your organization

New kinds of cybersecurity incidents are constantly emerging. A strong cyber defense based on smart risk management choices will lower the number of incidents your company deals with, but not all incidents can be prevented . Having an incident response team ready to take action is fundamental to protect your assets, minimize losses and prevent similar incidents in the future.

What is cyber incident response?

A cyber incident is any breach in the security policy of a given system that affects its availability or integrity; it is also defined as unauthorized access to a system or the attempt to access it without permission . Incident response is an organized and thorough process that is specifically designed to rapidly detect incidents, minimize their impact, protect your system , recover the affected assets, mitigate the exploited weaknesses and restore your network to secure working conditions.

The role of a Cyber Incident Response Team

Because time is of the essence, cyber incident response requires a dedicated and experienced team to not only handle the incident itself, but to be alert and on-call at all times, besides documenting the process and collecting evidence to ensure the same thing won’t happen twice. While small and medium businesses may not have the resources to assemble, train and support an in-house cyber incident response team, they can hire external cybersecurity professionals to handle the job . That’s where Pucara Cybersecurity comes in.

Professional incident response services for your organization

Our cyber response team is made up of former military cybersecurity experts and other highly skilled professionals with an extensive background in the field. Pucara Cybersecurity began as an offensive cybersecurity consultant, and we have brought that same aggressive, cutting-edge approach to our defensive cybersecurity services: because we know what attackers are looking for and how they operate, we are uniquely qualified to handle security incidents with the swiftness, organization and efficiency that they require.

Cyber Incident Response Overview

Incident response is a six-phase process. Strict adhesion to the cycle is needed to ensure full recovery, mitigation and prevention of similar and related incidents in the future.

Preparation

The incident response team has to be ready to deal with an incident at all times, be it hardware failure, a power outage, policy violation or a hack. Preparation includes:

Establishing company policy to determine what counts as an incident
Creating a response strategy to handle incidents based on impact
Creating a clear communication plan to contact individuals within your organization should the incident require it
Access control and the necessary permissions to deal with the incident
Tools (hardware and software) required to handle the incident ready to go at any moment
Documentation of past incidents, and an outline to create documentation of future incidents during the entire response cycle
Incident response training to ensure everyone knows what to do when an incident occurs (including regular drills)

Identification

The identification phase involves detecting and determining whether a deviation from regular operations qualifies as an incident or not. To correctly identify whether an event is an incident, and to establish its scope if it is, information must be gathered from several sources: log files, error messages, intrusion detection from firewalls and similar systems, etc.

Containment

The third phase involves limiting and preventing damages, which involves several steps.

Short-term containment: any actions that can be immediately taken to limit the impact of the incident before it gets worse , like isolating an infected network sector, or taking down servers that experienced the hack.
System back-up: a forensic image of the systems that were affected by the image must be taken, using industry standard tools. This will help preserve evidence while providing useful information about how the system was compromised for future reference.
Long-term containment: the last step involves temporarily fixing the affected systems so operations can go back to norma l. This can mean removing compromised accounts or backdoors left by the attackers, installing security patches on affected systems and any other actions that limit escalation while allowing normal operations to resume.

Eradication

Affected systems are finally removed and restored, ensuring that no trace of malicious or illicit content is left. The overall system defense should be improved accordingly, to ensure it can no longer be compromised in a similar fashion (exploited vulnerabilities must be patched or otherwise fixed).

Recovery

The affected systems are brought back into your organization’s environment. This process must be approached carefully and with caution, ensuring there won’t be a repeat of the incident. This involves testing, monitoring and system validation to ensure complete recovery.

Lessons Learned

The final phase completes the documentation process that took place during the entire incident response cycle. Every time there’s an incident, information must be gathered at each step of the response process to assess what happened. The final report should answer the how, what, where, who and why of the incident, and it will be discussed at the lessons learned meeting to provide insights into how response to similar incidents can be improved and how to improve the team’s overall performance .

We’re Your Offensive Cybersecurity Partner

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