Best Incident Response Strategies

You’re the newly hired Compliance Lead at a fast-growing tech startup. Two weeks into your role, you discover that the company has no formal incident response plan in place, even though it recently experienced a ransomware attack. Leadership is concerned but doesn’t know where to begin, and employees are confused about their roles during an incident. Your CEO asks you to draft a basic Incident Response Framework and outline the top 3 immediate steps the company should take to prepare for future incidents. - What would your first draft framework include? (Hint: Think of NIST’s Incident Response Lifecycle – preparation, detection, analysis, containment, eradication, and recovery.) - How would you ensure team alignment across IT, legal, and operations? (Hint: Consider regular tabletop exercises, clear role definitions, and a central incident communication channel.) - What tools or processes would you recommend to track and report incidents effectively? (Hint: Look at tools like Splunk for monitoring, Jira for tracking, and SOAR platforms for automation.)

14 lessons I learned about working with large distributed systems in the last 8 years of my career at Google, Cisco and DELL EMC. I love exploring system design & distributed systems. These are the insights I would give to my younger self If I were starting again: 1. Infrastructure Health Monitoring    - Monitor CPU utilization, memory usage, and other basics.    - Ensure auto-scaling and proactive alerting when resources are overloaded. 2. Service Health Monitoring: Traffic, Errors, and Latency    - Track traffic volume, error rates, and response times.    - Focus on latency percentiles (p95, p99) for a more accurate user experience. 3. Business Metrics Monitoring    - Track key business events to ensure the system enables "business as usual."    - Customize business metrics for specific services, such as payments. 4. Oncall and Anomaly Detection    - Teams should own their services, including the oncall responsibilities.    - Use machine learning for anomaly detection to reduce false positives. 5. Efficient Alerting    - Set thresholds for actionable alerts to avoid burning out on-call engineers.    - Regularly review alerts and tag non-actionable ones for future adjustment. 6. Runbooks for Mitigation    - Always have updated runbooks for common outages.    - Ensure mitigation steps are easy to follow, even for engineers unfamiliar with the system. 7. Outage Communication    - Establish clear channels for communicating outages across teams.    - Use central chat groups for faster, collaborative incident resolution. 8. Mitigate First, Investigate Later    - Focus on rolling back changes during outages instead of deploying fixes in haste.    - Root cause analysis can wait until after the incident is resolved. 9. Blameless Postmortems    - Investigate outages without assigning blame and identify root causes.    - Use techniques like the "5 Whys" to get to the heart of the issue. 10. Incident Reviews    - Have senior engineers and management review severe incidents.    - Ensure accountability for implementing system-level improvements. 11. Failover Drills and Capacity Planning    - Regularly test data center failovers to ensure services can handle increased traffic.    - Plan for future traffic with accurate capacity forecasting to avoid resource bottlenecks. 12. Blackbox Testing    - Simulate real user flows to ensure systems function correctly in real-world scenarios.    - Use blackbox tests for quick feedback during failover drills. 13. SLOs and SLAs    - Define service-level objectives (SLOs) for capacity, latency, and availability.    - Regularly measure and report on SLOs to ensure system performance is on track. 14. SRE Team Involvement    - Dedicated SRE teams should manage monitoring, alerting, and incident reviews.    - SREs ensure system reliability through failover drills, black box tests, and capacity planning.

Kelly McKinney asked Chat GPT to provide a Crisis Management Algorithm. I added the exact prompts into MS COPILOT. Here are the results. Blue Sky Phase (Pre-Crisis) 1. Crisis Envisioning and Planning   - Identify Potential Crises: Natural disasters, cyber-attacks, health emergencies, etc.   - Assess Resource and Consequence Challenges: Information flow, available resources, possible impacts.   - Draft Possible Scenarios: Create a library of realistic crisis scenarios. 2. Team Identification and Convening   - Identify Key Individuals and Groups: Roles such as communication, logistics, medical, security.   - Recruit Additional Members: Based on specific crisis needs.   - Schedule Training Sessions: Immersive crisis scenario simulations. 3. Development of Crisis Response Plan   - Establish Tactical Operations: Identify parallel and simultaneous operations.   - Assign Leads for Each Operation: Designate responsible individuals and groups.   - Create Flexible Response Guidelines: Document detailed yet adaptable procedures.    4. Team Readiness and Monitoring   - Establish 24/7 Monitoring: Set up systems to keep watch for any crisis signals.   - Information Gathering Systems: Develop methods to collect and assess initial signals.   - Crisis Simulations and Drills: Regularly conduct practice scenarios. Gray Sky Phase (During Crisis) 1. Signal Detection and Assessment   - Monitor Signals: Continuous observation of potential threats.   - Immediate Response: Gather detailed information upon detection of a signal.   - Initial Assessment: Evaluate if the signal could lead to a crisis. 2. Incident Management Team Notification and Activation   - Notify Incident Management Team: Use all available means (email, text, etc.).   - Convene Incident Management Team: Ensure team is quickly assembled.    3. Emergency Operations Facilitation   - Operations Meetings:     - Initial Briefing: Share situational awareness.    - Status Updates: Regular reports from individuals and groups on their operations.    - Address Issues and Needs: Identify obstacles and unmet needs, propose solutions.   - Tactical Execution: Oversee and support the execution of emergency operations. 4. Continuous Review and Adaptation   - Continuous Monitoring: Keep assessing the situation and adjusting the plan.   - Coordination and Communication: Ensure seamless coordination among team members.   - Resource Management: Efficiently allocate resources as per needs.   - Documentation: Maintain detailed records of decisions and actions taken. 5. Crisis Resolution and Debriefing   - Crisis Resolution: Keep operating until the crisis is resolved.   - Post-Crisis Review: Conduct a thorough review to identify lessons learned.   - Update Crisis Management Plan: Incorporate improvements based on the review. By following this algorithm, your crisis management team can efficiently manage crises, ensuring preparedness before they occur and effective action during their occurrence.

🚨 Incident Responders, this one's for you! 🚨 If you’re involved in cybersecurity or incident response, you won’t want to miss the new Microsoft Incident Response Ninja Hub. This hub is packed with in-depth guides, threat-hunting strategies, case studies, and incident response best practices, developed by the experts at the Microsoft Incident Response team (DART). It's a one-stop shop for actionable intelligence to help teams respond to threats effectively and efficiently. Here are just a few highlights from this incredible resource: 🔍 Threat Hunting Guides: Learn to hunt for suspicious activity across Microsoft Entra, Azure subscriptions, and even MFA manipulations. If you're using KQL, you’ll find advanced guides on leveraging Kusto Query Language (KQL) to detect and investigate threats in your environment. 🛡️ Incident Response Best Practices: From proactive incident response planning to detailed recovery strategies for hybrid identity compromises, the Ninja Hub covers key areas security teams need to know to be better prepared when a cyberattack happens. 📖 Case Studies: The hub features detailed case studies, like Microsoft’s analysis of NOBELIUM attacks or BlackByte ransomware intrusions, offering real-world lessons from some of the most complex incidents. These case studies offer a behind-the-scenes look at how the Microsoft team investigates and mitigates even the most advanced threats. 🛠️ Forensic and Investigation Tools: The hub includes guides on using Windows Internals for forensic investigations, cloud hunting strategies, and investigating malicious OAuth applications using Microsoft’s audit logs. Whether you’re investigating identity-based attacks or advanced malware, there are resources to help you dig deeper and stay ahead of attackers. 📑 One-Page Reference Guides: Need quick tips on threat hunting or response? The Ninja Hub also features concise, one-page guides that break down complex investigations into digestible steps, perfect for keeping handy during an active incident. Whether you’re responding to a ransomware attack or managing a mass password reset after a breach, this hub will equip you with the tools and strategies you need to protect your organization. And since the content is regularly updated, it’s a resource that’ll keep growing with you. 📌 Bookmark the Ninja Hub now and stay ahead of the latest in incident response! 👉 Explore the Ninja Hub and other useful resources using the links in the comments #IncidentResponse #ThreatHunting #MicrosoftSecurity #CyberSecurity #DART #KQL #Forensics #Ransomware

What if I told you the ideal Incident Response target KPI model exists, but that teams rarely use it? Back in 2018, Crowdstrike released their Global Threat Report focusing on ‘breakout time,’ or how long an attacker took to move laterally from their initial foothold. They proposed a 1-10-60 model showing what the "best" security teams do: 1 minute to detect an intrusion, 10 minutes to validate and decide what action to take, then 60 minutes to eject the intruder and clean up the network. I call this model ideal simply because of its logic. If you know how fast the attacker moves, it should be your goal to move faster. Back in 2018, the average breakout time was just under two hours. In 2024 it's down to 62 minutes. Back in 2018 and 2019, Crowdstrike blog posts used the words “eject and clean up.” Current blogs now state “isolation or remediation” which suggests containment as an option. It’s also now often referred to as the “1-10-60 Challenge,” likely because the breakout times keep dropping. The irony is that 60 minute targets aren’t something that managed Security Operations Center (SOC) providers will sell you. One current popular model looks something like 4 business hours response for Critical incidents, one business day for High, stretching to maybe four business days or even best effort on Low. You also need to read the fine print to understand what exactly is happening within those time frames. Is it four hours to remediate that Critical incident? Four hours to get an analyst assigned? Four hours to take first action? Getting all the lawyers to align on what containment even means is a challenge in and of itself. Thus, the most likely candidates to achieve 1-10-60 are those who have the resources to not only insource their SOC but also invest in multiple security technologies which work in combination with each other. So if you agree with the logic of the model, how do you use it? The interpretation that I have used is containment within that 60-minute target. Some examples I have seen of effective, company-wide containment methods include using a DNS sinkhole, blocking at the Internet proxy level, blocking at the firewall level, or blocking at the host level (endpoint agents, host firewalls / intrusion prevention, etc). What you use will really depend upon your own asset landscape and which tool gives the broadest coverage. In the end, even just examining your gaps will give you some insights. Perhaps your incident priority definitions haven’t been updated in a while or are too loosely defined, or you might even find that your security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) platform is functioning well and the team should be getting credit for some of those results. The target can feel daunting, but having a more accurate sense of your team’s capabilities is worth the effort spent. CISO Life – Tales from the trenches - 5 #CISO #Cybersecurity #CISOLife #IncidentResponse #SOC 

Post-Incident Reflections I am an Incident Response (IR) Lead at Blackswan Cybersecurity & we help companies deal with their worst cyber day pretty often. An IR Lead has the responsibility of not only bringing the technical expertise but also the humanity to help with an emotional, stressful, and sometimes heated political situation. You must be capable of observing the environment for influences and conflicts, personalities, leadership.... and the crazy. Some people are overwhelmed by emotions & resistant to advice, focusing more on sharing their misery or projecting blame rather than seeking resolution. If they truly want to recover, they need to get out of the way & be a C or I on the RACI chart. If they insist on being in the middle of it, excuse yourself; it's not worth the mental or legal liability. In all other situations, the IR Lead must collaborate in setting expectations & the Rules of Engagement. The Fire Department may ask a few questions when then show for your house fire, like is anyone inside, how did it start, any explosives?. They direct the homeowner to get out of the way & begin employing their expertise to contain & eradicate the fire. If the homeowner interferes, the experts' effectiveness is diminished proportionately (time, impact, loss). Cyber IR is very similar. The experts are here to help, but most importantly to provide their objective experiences from various other incidents where things did & didn't work, prioritization of activities, known tactics, & known mitigations. Cutting to the chase - if an organization engages an IR Team (IRT), they must listen to the advice and direction provided by those who are battle-worn and covered in trench dirt. If they don't, the IRT's effectiveness in putting out the fire is diminished, and in the worst case - the IRT may leave them alone, in the fire, in the dark. What prompted me to consume a few minutes of your day? - Reflections from recent IRs where advice and direction regarding Backups, Assets, Remote Access, & Privileged Accounts weren't followed. So many of the Incidents we've worked could have been quickly addressed with good, secure, trusted, and available backups. And if your ransomware IR Lead suggests that you power off your critical servers and your online backups - Do it - Do it now. Time & again we hear "we got this", "they are secure", followed by "yeah, they are hosed". The other topic I'd like to stress is "Know Thy Self". If you don't know the value, criticality, purpose, or owner of systems in your environment during an IR, there will be pause in dealing with it. Create and maintain an inventory of all your assets, ideally to include a baseline of applications and services so you can quickly determine anomalies. Third - Restrict & inventory remote access, turn it off until needed, and require MFA. Lastly, ensure you know who has privileged access to your applications, hosts, and networks. Reach out if you'd like to discuss further.

Incident response doesn’t start when the alarm goes off. It starts WAY earlier. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak with a team in healthcare who’s putting that mindset into practice. They’re using the #NIST #CybersecurityFramework to set a solid foundation and build resilience across their teams. We talked about how incident response isn’t just a plan on paper. It needs to be actionable. It’s a capability woven throughout the entire cybersecurity program (hear me out!). In #CSF terms... ◾Govern, Identify, and Protect are where the heavy lifting happens before anything goes wrong. That means defining roles, understanding what’s at risk, and putting protections in place to reduce the impact if something happens. ◾Detect, Respond, and Recover are about what happens when something does go wrong. This is where visibility, coordination, and restoration come into play. When we react we need to be fast, focused, and aligned with our business objectives. But here’s my takeaway: Resilience isn’t built in the moment, it’s built into the program. Interested in guidance on using the CSF for incident response? Did you know that #NIST has a pub for that?! Check out the recently updated SP 800-61r3 here! 👇https://lnkd.in/ezqP9rSx

On my wishlist of items I would love companies to do: 𝐈𝐑 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬. Writing documentation is the worst part of any job, but its critical to ensuring the right steps are taken during chaotic incidents. An 𝐈𝐑 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧 has the 𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒄𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒄𝒆𝒅𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒔 an organization follows during an incident, including: 🔹What responsibilities do internal groups have? 🔹When do 3rd parties get contacted? 🔹What are incident severities and their SLAs? 𝐈𝐑 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 are 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒅𝒆𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒍𝒆𝒅 and often tied to specific types of incident. 🔹How does your team react to a phishing attack? Ransomware? Server compromise? 🔹Do they shut down the system or quarantine it? 🔹How do they investigate? Both IR Plans and Playbooks are important to have and to follow! Test them out, make sure they work, and utilize them. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑛’𝑡 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑎𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑡 𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑐𝑘𝑏𝑜𝑥𝑒𝑠. Whether a company has IR Plans and Playbooks but ignores them, or doesn’t have them at all, the result is the same. Mistakes are made during incidents, response takes longer, and the company faces higher costs and extended downtime. To get you started, here are some great example plan and policies. If you know of others, post them in the comments. 🔹MS IR Playbooks: https://lnkd.in/gMkWiNSe 🔹CERT Societe Generale Sample Playbooks: https://lnkd.in/gks4terZ 🔹SANS Sample IR Forms: https://lnkd.in/gq3AQXKG 🔹Sample IR Plan Template: https://lnkd.in/gX-8grRY #incidentresponse #dfir #plan #inversion6