Effective Procedures for Incident Response

Phase 1: Preparation
A robust incident response plan is necessary to avoid security breaches and threats. Predetermined guidelines and preparation are critical elements in order to successfully address a security event. Include the following steps in an incident response plan:

• Establish and document incident response agreements, policies and procedures.
• Create IR guidelines and standards for seamless communication during and after an occurrence.
• Collect, analyze and synchronize the threat intelligence feeds.
• For a proactive response to find incident occurrences, conduct operational cyber hunting exercises.
• Update improvement and risk assessment programs to analyze current threat detection.

Phase 2: Identification & Swift Analysis
Detection phase is a critical step to recognize any abnormal activity or event. Close monitoring can help identify, alert, and report potential incidents. Creating an incident ticket, documenting initial findings, and assigning a classification for alerts can get the team to work swiftly and prevent a security threat.

Phase 3: Containment
Further analysis of devices and stems in order to collect data and identify indicators of a threat is carried out. After gathering all the needed information, backups are taken and the incident response team works to shut down the incident. Every compromised account and machine is documented so that effective containment can be performed. The team also conducts forensic investigation to determine the severity of the compromise.

Phase 4: Remediation
Once the affected systems have been identified, the team works to find the root cause of the incident and eradicate traces of the attack. Compromised accounts are remediated to prevent any other incident-related issue in the future. Threat mitigation requests are created to block communication from hackers and eliminate the possibility of repeat occurrences.

Phase 5: Recovery
After restoration, the affected devices and systems are returned to the business process. Changes and updates are tested to ensure the new cybersecurity measures are operating without any glitches. A final check is also done to ensure every trace of the attacker and incidents have been eliminated.

Phase 6: Post-Incident Activities
A proper documentation after resolving the incident can prevent any future occurrences. It will not only help improve the IR plan but also augment security measures and rectify discrepancies, if any.

• Threats tend to reappear, no matter what protocol is followed. Close monitoring of the post-incident activities and a security log can help detect the incident early.
• Create new initiatives and update threat intelligence feeds to avoid any future occurrence
• Ensure that the new security initiatives are properly implemented across the organization