What is Incident Response?

 

 Incident response is a predefined, structured process for handling a successful security breach of an organization, also known as an IT incident, computer incident, or security incident, to handle the incident effectively while minimizing damage, recovery time and costs. An organizational incident response team follows a set of instructions that manifest the organization's response to security incidents and breaches, known as the incident response procedure/plan (IRP).

  

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What Are The Steps of Incident Response?

 

The incident response life cycle was defined by the National Institute of Technology (NIST), which also created a framework designed for handling security incidents.

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The original incident response life cycle was a 4-phase cycle:

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1. Preparation

2. Detection and Analysis

3. Containment, Eradication and Recovery

4. Post-Incident Activity

 

The 7-phase incident response life cycle includes the following phases:

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1. Preparation is the first step in establishing an incident response plan (IRP). Roles and responsibilities must be defined, as well as implementing relevant security controls and response measures.

2. Detection and Identification, by detecting suspicious activity and identifying potential security incidents..

3. Scoping and containment - Isolation of compromised systems or networks to prevent further damage or spread of the incident while monitoring for newly compromised systems and containing them (until full containment).

4. Remediation and eradication - any remaining threats or remnants related to the perpetrator/attacker are removed. The incident's exact scope and cause must be determined following successful containment to ensure complete eradication.

5. Restore affected systems, data from backups (in case of data loss/corruption), and services to normal operations, ensuring business continuity.

6. Lessons Learned - gather all relevant persons and the incident response team members for a post-incident review to identify threat detection gaps and enhance incident response capabilities.

7. Document the incident, its impact, response actions, and any lessons learned for future reference and compliance purposes.

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What is an Incident Response Plan (IRP)?

 

An incident response plan (IRP) is an organization's documented set of procedures to respond to and manage security incidents or data breaches effectively. The primary purpose of an IRP is to minimize the impact of security incidents, reduce recovery time, and maintain business continuity.

The plan must address and include the following:

• An Incident Response Team

• Roles and responsibilities

• Communications during incidents

• Incident identification procedure

• Escalation procedures

• Incident response steps and recovery (the IR life cycle)

• Frequent IRP testing and maintenance.

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What is Digital Forensics?

 

Digital forensics is collecting, preserving, analyzing, and presenting digital evidence in legal investigations. It focuses on investigating and recovering electronic data to uncover information relevant to criminal activities, security breaches, or other incidents.

 

Digital forensics involves techniques and tools to extract, interpret, and analyze data from various digital sources such as computers, mobile devices, networks, and cloud environments.

 

Digital forensics aims to identify and present evidence in a forensically sound manner that can be used in legal proceedings. It plays a crucial role in modern investigations, providing insights into cybercrimes, data breaches, intellectual property theft, fraud, and other digital-related offenses.

 

 

What is the Process of Digital Forensics?

 

Digital Forensics is commonly done in the following manner:

1. Gather information about the incident. As the What, When, Where, Who, Why and How questions.

2. Forensic investigators then collect evidence on electronic devices and save it to a safe external disk/drive.

3. Evidence is documented and its integrity is verified (using hashing and other means). The process of documenting and keeping track of the chronological history and movement of physical or digital evidence in a legal or investigative context is referred to as the chain of custody.

4. The above steps may repeat if the incident scope changes frequently when newly compromised endpoints or assets are detected.

5. Evidence is examined using digital forensics tools and software for various purposes. Examples vary from finding evidence of execution (of software on systems) to evidence of data theft, exfiltration and more.

6. Once all evidence is analyzed and findings are gathered, an information security incident report is written, which contains an executive summary of the incident, documentation of investigation steps, findings, conclusions and recommendations.

7. The report can then be used for legal purposes and presented in court.