8 Best Incident Response Use Cases
11.11.2019
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Incident response is a well-organized approach used in organizations’ IT departments in order to combat and manage the aftermath of a cyberattack or a security breach. The purpose of using incident response is to get out of the nightmare that includes limiting the damage and reducing the costs and recovery time of the incident. The people who perform incident response are called Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) and they follow company’s Incident Response Plan (IRP).
More often, incident response helps in detecting, investigating, and responding to data breaches and offers several methods for threat identification, analysis, and remediation. In this article, we will discover 8 best incident response use cases.
1. Using Files Hashes to Locate IOCs
Forensic analysis cannot begin unless CSIRT team finds out the Indicators of Compromise (IoCs), which can be done using the file hashes. After that, they perform investigation through Endpoint search, entity details and related events. Afterwards, endpoint full dump is performed to locate items that require remediation via endpoint isolation and file deletion. In addition, whitelisting or blacklisting can also be used to categorize good or bad items.
2. Precise Detection
Cybersecurity threats nowadays are complex and multi-staged, with continually changing variants that are capable of bypassing traditional security controls. Incident response plan uses IoCs, user behavior, files, and network communication and correlates them to precisely detect cyber threats.
3. Quick Response
The access to the endpoints can help CSIRT teams to respond to threats very quickly via manual or automatic remediation. Doing so can help them to detect, disrupt, and respond to even Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) before they inflict damage to corporate IT infrastructure. A quick response may include deleting files, changing IP addresses or blocking network traffic, verifying files with Sandboxes, blocking users, or killing processes.
4. Investigative Forensics
Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) have paramount importance in incident response plan. IoCs are recorded over time for forensics purposes. Doing so will allow CSIRT teams to deeply understand the attack scenarios and actionable intelligence required for investigators. IoCs must be effective to make the forensic evidence admissible in the courtroom.
5. Automated Incident Response
Automated incident response can help enterprises to rapidly combat threats and allow CSIRT teams more time to conduct investigations and remediate the attack. As soon as the suspicious activity is detected, the incident response plan tool will automatically raise alert and grab analysts’ attention towards the incident. Another example is related to a Firewall. You can automatically update or preconfigure your Firewall to block malicious IP addresses are as soon as they are detected.
6. Orchestrated Incident Response
Orchestrated incident response is an approach used to align people, processes, and technology that is involved in responding to cyber threats and attacks. The purpose of doing so is to empower CSIRT teams by ensuring that they know exactly what to do; when an incident will strike; the right tools and processes are in place to respond swiftly, correctly, and effectively to the incidents.
7. Using PowerShell to Download and Execute a Malicious File
As the name of this use case implies, PowerShell (a security tool) is used to download and execute a malicious file in order to remediate the incident. The incident is detected and investigated through entity details and related events, as well as through Sandbox analysis.
8. Proactive Incident Response
The proactive incident response allows CSIRT teams or security analysts to proactively pursue security threats and enables them to discover security incidents or their signs before their actual occurrence. Doing so can help organizations to look for threat hunting, rather than just using reactive approaches that work once the attack has been taken place, such as traditional security tools like antivirus programs.
Conclusion
Today’s cybersecurity threats are fast and sophisticated. Traditional security solutions are inefficient to effectively and efficiently detect and respond to cyber threats and attacks. However, this can be done effectively using the incident response plan.
