Incident response (IR) refers to the processes followed by an organization after a cybersecurity incident has occurred. The goal of IR is to detect, analyze, and contain a security breach while minimizing damages and restoring normal operations as quickly as possible.
What are the goals of incident response?
The main goals of incident response are:
- Detect potential incidents rapidly
- Analyze the scope, impact, and root cause of incidents
- Contain incidents to prevent further damage
- Eradicate threats and restore affected systems
- Recover normal operations as quickly as possible
- Learn from incidents to improve security and response in the future
What are the key phases of incident response?
Incident response typically involves the following key phases:
- Preparation – Developing incident response policies, procedures, roles, resources, and tools ahead of time.
- Detection and analysis – Detecting anomalies and potential incidents, then performing analysis to determine if an incident has occurred.
- Containment – Isolating affected systems and preventing an incident from spreading.
- Eradication – Removing malware, disabling breached user accounts, patching vulnerabilities to eliminate an attacker’s means of persistence.
- Recovery – Restoring affected systems and data to return to normal operations.
- Post-incident activity – Documenting and reporting on incidents, conducting analysis to improve detection and response capabilities.
Preparation phase
Effective preparation is crucial for responding quickly and efficiently to security incidents. During the preparation phase, an organization should:
- Develop comprehensive incident response policies and procedures
- Establish incident response teams and define roles and responsibilities
- Provide incident response training to team members
- Acquire necessary tools and resources for detection, analysis, containment, and recovery
- Establish communication plans for reporting and coordinating response activities
- Plan integration with external partners that may assist during significant incidents
Detection and analysis phase
The detection and analysis phase aims to promptly discover potential security incidents and perform initial analysis to determine whether an incident has truly occurred. Activities include:
- 24/7 monitoring through security tools like IDS/IPS, AV, firewalls
- Aggregating and correlating event data to identify anomalies
- Receiving incident alerts from various sources internally and externally
- Validating and prioritizing alerts to distinguish real incidents from false positives
- Performing preliminary analysis to characterize an incident and determine its severity
- Logging all potential incidents and alerting the incident response team
Containment phase
Once an incident is confirmed, containing it is essential to prevent further damage. Containment actions involve:
- Isolating affected systems from the network by disabling switch ports, restricting VLAN access, implementing ACLs, etc.
- Blocking suspicious IP addresses at firewalls and other ingress/egress points
- Disabling compromised user accounts
- Stopping potentially compromised services and processes
- Securing and preserving evidence and logs for analysis
Eradication phase
After an incident is contained, eradication aims to eliminate components that enabled the incident, such as:
- Removing malware, backdoors, and other attacker artifacts from systems
- Patching vulnerabilities that were exploited
- Tightening controls to prevent reinfection or lateral movement
- Identifying and mitigating all compromised user accounts
- Improving defenses and access controls to stop similar attacks
Recovery phase
Once eradication is complete, recovery focuses on restoring systems and operations back to normal. Recovery actions involve:
- Rebuilding compromised systems from clean backups or images
- Validating system integrity before restoring network access
- Resetting account credentials that were misused
- Installing patches, updating configurations, and hardening defenses
- Testing functionality of critical systems and data
- Carefully restoring business operations
Post-incident activity phase
After recovery, important post-incident steps include:
- Completing incident documentation and reporting
- Conducting a root cause analysis to identify gaps and areas for improvement
- Updating incident response plans based on lessons learned
- Retaining evidence and logs according to policy
- Reporting details to leadership, customers, authorities, etc. as applicable
What are the key roles and responsibilities in incident response?
Effective incident response requires participation and coordination across multiple roles, such as:
- CISO – Provides overall direction, oversight, and support for the IR program
- Incident response manager – Leads and coordinates all aspects of incident handling and reporting
- Security analysts – Monitor systems, detect incidents, analyze impact, run forensics
- Security engineers – Contain infections, eradicate malware, patch systems
- Network engineers – Reconfigure access controls, isolate compromised systems
- System administrators – Assist with monitoring, system analysis, recovery efforts
- Legal team – Provide guidance regarding compliance, legal obligations, evidence preservation
- Public relations – Manage communications and messaging related to incidents
- Upper management – Support the program with leadership and strategic direction
What are important incident response tools and resources?
Key tools and resources utilized during incident response include:
- SIEM – Security information and event management systems aggregate and analyze log data to detect anomalies
- IDS/IPS – Intrusion detection and prevention systems identify and block malicious network activity
- EDR – Endpoint detection and response tools provide visibility and control over endpoints
- Forensics tools – Collect and analyze data from compromised systems to understand root cause
- Threat intelligence – External feeds help identify indicators of compromise and exploit details
- Sandboxes – Provide isolated environments to safely execute and analyze malware samples
- Ticketing systems – Track incident responders’ workflows, progress, and documentation
What best practices strengthen incident response capabilities?
Organizations should follow these best practices to build effective incident response programs:
- Perform incident response planning and preparation during “peacetime”
- Test incident response capabilities regularly through exercises and drills
- Establish written policies and playbooks for consistency
- Ensure proper visibility into systems, networks, endpoints, and events
- Retain skilled personnel and provide ongoing training
- Integrate threat intelligence to improve detections
- Coordinate with external partners to augment resources as needed
- Continuously improve by learning lessons and measuring performance
How is incident response integrated with other security programs?
Incident response should align closely with other key security programs, including:
- Security operations – 24/7 monitoring, alerting, and threat detection activities feed into IR
- Vulnerability management – Efforts to patch systems reduce risk and enhance incident prevention
- Threat hunting – Proactively searches for breaches and IOCs that may initiate IR
- Disaster recovery – Restores systems from backup after major incidents
- Business continuity – Enables ongoing operations during incidents
- Risk management – Identifies critical assets and risks that help guide IR priorities
- Security awareness training – Prepares staff to assist with response duties
What metrics are used to measure the effectiveness of incident response programs?
Key performance indicators to assess incident response include:
- Mean time to detect incidents
- Mean time to respond to incidents
- Percentage of incidents successfully contained
- Median number of systems compromised per incident
- Average incident recovery time
- Ratio of true positives to false positives from detection systems
- Percentage of staff completing required IR training
Monitoring these metrics over time enables organizations to identify gaps and make data-driven improvements to incident response capabilities.
What legal obligations exist regarding incident response?
Major legal and compliance obligations related to incident response include:
- Data breach notification laws – Require notifying impacted individuals and authorities about data breaches within a specific timeframe
- SEC cybersecurity disclosure rules – Mandate disclosing material cyber incidents and risks to shareholders
- HIPAA – Requires healthcare organizations to report data breach incidents
- GLBA – Financial institutions must meet incident response standards under the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act
- SOX – Public companies must assess cyber risks and controls to meet Sarbanes-Oxley requirements
- PCI DSS – Merchants handling credit cards must comply with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards for IR
Proper incident handling is necessary for demonstrating due diligence and avoiding regulatory non-compliance fees.
What trends and technologies are impacting incident response?
Major trends influencing modern incident response include:
- Increasing use of cloud infrastructure, which requires updated response procedures
- Acceleration of attacks, compressing response timeframes
- More sophisticated threats utilizing evasive techniques
- Ransomware and data extortion attacks that mandate quick containment
- Expanding attack surfaces with IoT, OT, and third parties
- AI/ML technologies assisting human responders with triage and remediation
Example Incident Response Metrics
Here is an example table visualizing key incident response performance metrics for an organization:
| Metric | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mean time to detect (hours) | 18 | 12 | 9 | 6 |
| Mean time to respond (hours) | 36 | 24 | 18 | 12 |
| Containment success rate | 76% | 81% | 88% | 95% |
| Systems compromised per incident | 22 | 17 | 13 | 7 |
| Average recovery time (days) | 32 | 27 | 22 | 15 |
Conclusion
Effective incident response is crucial for rapidly detecting and mitigating security breaches before they result in substantial damage. Continuous improvement of IR capabilities, integration with other security programs, following best practices, and applying the right tools and metrics helps organizations enhance their incident preparedness. As threats continue evolving, maturing an organization’s incident response posture and learning from each incident will be key to building cyber resilience.