Incident Response
Incident Response (IR) is the structured approach and set of procedures an organization uses to detect, manage, and recover from a cybersecurity breach or cyberattack. The primary goal of incident response is to handle the situation in a way that limits damage, reduces recovery time and costs, and prevents future occurrences.
A robust incident response capability ensures that, when a security threat arises—whether it is a malware infection, a phishing attack, or a data breach—the organization has a disciplined plan to address it rather than reacting chaotically.
The Incident Response Lifecycle
Most organizations follow a standard incident response framework, such as those provided by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) or SANS. This lifecycle is typically divided into distinct phases.
Preparation: This is the most critical phase. It involves establishing an incident response team (CSIRT), developing policies, and ensuring the necessary tools are in place before an attack occurs. This includes conducting mock drills and ensuring backups are operational.
Detection and Analysis: In this phase, security teams monitor networks to detect and analyze suspicious activity. Once an alert is triggered, the team analyzes the data to determine whether a security incident has occurred, which systems are affected, and the severity of the threat.
Containment: Once an incident is confirmed, the immediate priority is to stop it from spreading. This might involve disconnecting affected servers from the network or disabling compromised user accounts. Containment is often split into short-term (stopping immediate damage) and long-term (restoring systems to a production-ready state) efforts.
Eradication: After containment, the team must remove the root cause of the incident. This involves deleting malware, removing bad actors from the network, and patching the vulnerabilities that were exploited.
Recovery: This phase involves restoring affected systems and data from clean backups. Systems are brought back online carefully, often in stages, to ensure the threat is truly gone and normal business operations can resume.
Post-Incident Activity: After the incident is resolved, the team reviews what happened. They document lessons learned, identify what worked and what did not, and update the incident response plan to be better prepared for the next potential threat.
Key Components of an Incident Response Plan
A successful IR strategy relies on several core elements working together.
The Incident Response Plan (IRP): A formal document that outlines the roles, responsibilities, and procedures for handling an incident.
Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT): A dedicated group of individuals, often cross-functional (IT, Legal, PR, Management), responsible for executing the IRP.
Communication Strategy: A clear protocol for who needs to be informed during a breach, including internal stakeholders, customers, law enforcement, and regulatory bodies.
Playbooks: Specific guides for handling common threat types, such as a "Ransomware Playbook" or a "Phishing Playbook," which provide step-by-step instructions for analysts.
Frequently Asked Questions about Incident Response
What is the difference between an event and an incident? An event is any observable occurrence in a system or network, such as a user connecting to a file share or a server receiving a request. An incident is an event that negatively affects the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of an information system or violates a security policy.
Why is an Incident Response Plan necessary? An Incident Response Plan is necessary because cyberattacks are inevitable. Without a plan, organizations react slowly and inefficiently, leading to higher costs, data loss, and significant reputational damage.
Who is responsible for Incident Response? While technical execution is led by the Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) or the Security Operations Center (SOC), effective incident response requires cooperation from executive leadership, legal counsel, human resources, and public relations.
What is the "Golden Hour" in Incident Response? The "Golden Hour" refers to the critical first hour after an incident is detected. Rapid, decisive action during this timeframe can significantly reduce the attack's impact and spread.
ThreatNG and Incident Response (IR)
ThreatNG significantly enhances Incident Response (IR) by shifting from reactive firefighting to proactive management. It achieves this by providing the external intelligence, continuous monitoring, and investigative depth necessary to detect threats early, contain them rapidly, and recover effectively.
External Discovery for Early Warning
ThreatNG’s external discovery capability acts as an early warning system, identifying exposed assets before they become incident vectors. This purely external, unauthenticated discovery requires no connectors or agents.
Shadow IT Identification: It uncovers "Shadow IT" assets—unauthorized cloud instances, SaaS applications, or login portals—that often bypass security controls and serve as entry points for attackers.
Attack Surface Mapping: By continuously monitoring the external attack surface, ThreatNG identifies new or forgotten assets, such as abandoned subdomains or exposed development environments, that could be exploited.
External Assessment for Vulnerability Prioritization
ThreatNG performs deep assessments to identify vulnerabilities that could lead to incidents, enabling IR teams to prioritize remediation efforts.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: This assessment identifies subdomains pointing to unclaimed third-party services. If an attacker claims these, they can host phishing sites or malware, leading to a significant incident. ThreatNG validates these risks to confirm "dangling DNS" states.
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: By analyzing missing security headers, such as Content-Security-Policy (CSP) and HSTS, ThreatNG identifies web assets vulnerable to client-side attacks, including XSS and clickjacking, which can compromise user sessions.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: ThreatNG evaluates an organization's susceptibility to Business Email Compromise (BEC) by analyzing domain permutations, missing DMARC/SPF records, and compromised credentials, helping to prevent one of the most common incident types.
Investigation Modules for Deep Context
ThreatNG’s investigation modules provide the granular detail needed during an incident to understand the threat's scope and nature.
Domain Intelligence: This module provides a comprehensive view of domain-related risks, including DNS records, associated vendors, and potential for domain permutations (typosquatting) that could be used in phishing campaigns.
Subdomain Intelligence: It analyzes subdomains for security headers, cloud hosting details, and content identification, helping to pinpoint compromised or vulnerable subdomains that might be part of an active attack.
Social Media & LinkedIn Discovery: These modules identify employees susceptible to social engineering and monitor public chatter for threat actor plans, providing crucial context on potential human-targeted attacks.
Intelligence Repositories for Threat Attribution
ThreatNG’s intelligence repositories (DarCache) provide the data needed to attribute threats and understand attacker capabilities.
Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): This repository tracks organizational emails associated with breaches. During an incident, checking this can quickly confirm if a user account was compromised via a known leak.
Ransomware Groups and Activities (DarCache Ransomware): This tracks over 100 ransomware gangs, providing insights into their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). This information is vital for understanding a ransomware actor's behavior during an active incident.
Vulnerabilities (DarCache Vulnerability): This repository fuses data from NVD, KEV, and EPSS to provide a prioritized view of vulnerabilities, helping IR teams focus on the most critical flaws being exploited in the wild.
Continuous Monitoring and Reporting
Continuous monitoring ensures that the organization’s security posture is always visible, and reporting provides the necessary documentation for stakeholders.
Real-Time Alerts: ThreatNG continuously monitors the external attack surface and alerts IR teams to new risks, such as open ports or exposed buckets, as they appear.
Risk-Prioritized Reporting: Reports are categorized by risk level (High, Medium, Low), enabling IR teams to focus on the most immediate threats and communicate effectively with executive leadership.
Cooperation with Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG enhances the effectiveness of other security tools by providing high-fidelity external intelligence.
SIEM Integration: ThreatNG feeds data on compromised credentials, domain permutations, and vulnerabilities into Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems. This enables the SIEM to correlate external threats with internal logs to accelerate incident detection.
SOAR Automation: Integration with Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) platforms enables automated responses to ThreatNG findings, such as blocking malicious domains or resetting compromised passwords.
Ticketing Systems: ThreatNG can automatically generate tickets in systems like Jira or ServiceNow for identified vulnerabilities, streamlining the remediation workflow for IR and IT teams.
Examples of ThreatNG in Incident Response
Scenario 1: Phishing Attack: ThreatNG detects a "lookalike" domain (typosquatting) registered by an attacker. It alerts the security team, who can block the domain at the firewall and email gateway before the phishing campaign reaches employees.
Scenario 2: Ransomware Prevention: ThreatNG identifies an exposed RDP port on a forgotten server. The IR team is alerted and closes the port before a ransomware group can use it for initial access.
Scenario 3: Credential Leak: ThreatNG picks up a dump of employee credentials on the dark web. It triggers an automated workflow that forces password resets for affected users, preventing account takeover.
