Incident Response:
A Critical Enterprise Capability
Cybersecurity incidents are inevitable. A rapid and healthy recovery is not. A data breach, ransomware attack, or insider threat demands swift and effective action to minimize business impact, protect valuable assets, and ensure continuity of operations. Grounded in proven strategies and modern practices, our approach provides organizations with a robust framework to address and manage cybersecurity incidents from start to finish.
Core Principles
Because our methods adher to these core principles, adopting it makes your organization more resilient, proactive, and adaptive in the face of incidents:
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Focus on Resilience
Rather than chasing an unrealistic and wasteful goal of zero incidents, our approach emphasizes building resilience. It’s about ensuring that the damage is limited when breaches occur, and business operations can continue with minimal disruption.
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Prevention and Preparation First
Prevention is far more effective than reaction. Our methodology stresses the importance of proactive security measures, such as reducing attack surfaces, hardening systems, and preparing your workforce. A well-defined, regularly tested incident response plan is key to minimizing both the likelihood and severity of security incidents.
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Human-Centric Approach
The human element is as crucial as technology in incident response. We advocate for a culture of psychological safety and stress management, ensuring incident responders are not overworked and can make sound decisions under pressure. A well-balanced, well-prepared team will respond more effectively to incidents.
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Structured Yet Agile Process
While a structured approach to IR is necessary, flexibility is equally important. Our methodology follows established frameworks like NIST while allowing teams to adapt to specific needs. Part of being agile is always learning so our methodology uses recovery post-incident to learn from every event to improve your organization’s resilience.
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Collaboration Across Teams
Incident response is most effective when development, operations, and security teams work closely together. By breaking down silos, we enable faster detection, quicker containment, and more efficient recovery.
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Automation and Tooling at Scale
Technology can amplify human capabilities. Our methodology integrates cloud-native services, security orchestration, and automation tools to streamline detection and response, enabling organizations to scale their security operations as they grow.
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Data-Driven Threat Detection
Threat intelligence and frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK are integral to our methodology. By leveraging data from past incidents and continuously refining detection rules, teams are able to respond faster and more accurately.
Differentiators from Traditional IR Frameworks
While traditional incident response frameworks (like NIST and SANS) provide essential guidance, our services set us apart in several key ways:
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Proactive Prevention and Preparedness: We elevate incident avoidance to a primary goal and integrate it throughout the process, ensuring that organizations are ready to respond when incidents inevitably occur.
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Modular and Scalable Design: Organizations can adopt individual modules as needed, making the methodology adaptable to enterprises of all sizes and stages of maturity.
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People-First Approach: Recognizing the human element in incident response, our methodology emphasizes team resilience, mental well-being, and the importance of cross-functional collaboration.
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Automation and Cloud-Native Integration: Leveraging cloud infrastructure and automation tools, we enable enterprises to respond faster and scale their incident response efforts efficiently.
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Continuous Improvement: The methodology includes built-in feedback loops to ensure that each incident provides valuable insights to strengthen security posture and response capabilities.
Incident Response Framework
Our process is modular and scalable, providing enterprises with a flexible, productized approach to managing security incidents. It includes four main phases, each designed to integrate seamlessly into your existing security posture. The modular design ensures that organizations can implement or improve individual phases based on their maturity, size, and resources.
Our framework accommodates both a proactive, retainer-based contract vehicle as well as on-demand emergency support. A retainer will encompass all 4 modules of the framework including preparation to ensure coordination, comprehensiveness and efficiency while our on-demand response begins with Module 2 to rapidly identify and eradicate attacker activity.
Module 1: Incident Avoidance and Preparation
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Objective: Proactively reduce the likelihood of incidents and prepare the organization for swift response.
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Key Activities:
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Hardening systems and reducing attack surfaces.
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Implementing strong identity and access management (IAM) controls.
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Conducting vulnerability assessments and patch management.
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Developing and testing incident response plans, policies, and communication strategies.
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Training staff and conducting simulated tabletop exercises.
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Module 2: Detection & Analysis
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Objective: Rapidly detect security incidents and analyze them to ensure an effective response.
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Key Activities:
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Continuous monitoring using Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) tools.
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Automated alerting and threat detection using MITRE ATT&CK-based techniques.
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Correlating alerts from cloud-native services and on-premises systems for comprehensive coverage.
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Incident analysis and determining scope and severity.
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Module 3: Containment, Eradication, & Response
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Objective: Stop the attacker's activity, eliminate their foothold, and remediate the vulnerabilities.
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Key Activities:
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Rapid containment actions using pre-established runbooks.
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Isolating affected systems and users, stopping data exfiltration, and blocking malicious traffic.
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Eradicating malware, unauthorized access, and exploiting vulnerabilities.
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Coordinating with IT and DevOps teams to minimize disruption to ongoing business processes.
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Module 4: Recovery and Post-Incident Improvement
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Objective: Restore systems to normal operations while learning from the incident to improve future resilience.
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Key Activities:
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Rebuilding or restoring affected systems from clean backups.
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Post-incident review and documentation, including a detailed root cause analysis.
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Implementing lessons learned into policies, controls, and response plans.
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Monitoring systems after recovery to ensure no residual threats remain.
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Updating security controls and training programs to prevent similar incidents.
Tools, Processes, and Playbooks
To operationalize the methodology, we provide a combination of tools, processes, and playbooks that integrate into your existing security architecture. These tools help streamline incident response, improve detection and response times, and ensure repeatability.
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Preventative Tools: Tools for configuration auditing, IAM, vulnerability management, and endpoint protection.
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Detection & Analysis Tools: SIEM, EDR, cloud security tools (like AWS GuardDuty and Security Hub), and automated threat detection rules.
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Containment & Response Tools: Cloud automation (e.g., AWS Lambda), firewalls, network segmentation, and forensic investigation tools.
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Post-Incident Tools: Incident tracking systems, root cause analysis templates, and post-mortem reports for continuous improvement.
Use Cases and Applicability Scenarios
Our modular approach enables it to scale for a range of organizations. Below are a few examples of how the methodology can be applied:
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Cloud-Native Tech Startup: Leveraging cloud-native tools and automation to rapidly respond to incidents, ensuring minimal downtime and business impact.
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Large Enterprise with Hybrid Infrastructure: Integrating detection across cloud and on-premise environments, with coordinated response teams across security, IT, and development.
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Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs): Offering incident response services to clients, with a flexible methodology that can be adapted to different industries and security needs.