How do you keep up with evolving threats in incident response?

Before tackling an incident, be a master cartographer of your IT landscape. Map your assets, their locations, configurations, and vulnerabilities. Listen to the whispers of your network – monitor logs, alerts, and traffic for suspicious shadows. This deep understanding becomes your shield, letting you spot breaches as soon as they flicker on the horizon, ready to be thwarted.

Regularly reviewing and improving your ITAM practices is crucial to keeping up with evolving threats, such as increased vulnerability, compliance issues, inefficiencies, and sub-optimal incident response

Constantly needs to remap your environment and to maintain and stay up-to-date. Build a comum process to update your knowledge base. Training your team to use the knowledge base and investigate the root cause. Frequently, review all these steps to improve the performance

To stay updated on evolving threats in incident response, invest in continuous training, participate in threat intelligence sharing, monitor security blogs, attend conferences, participate in red team exercises, and monitor security bulletins. Utilize threat hunting techniques, collaborate with platforms, engage with cybersecurity communities, and use automated detection tools. Regularly update incident response plans, integrate threat intelligence platforms, and engage with government agencies. Establish relationships with vendors, conduct tabletop exercises, and implement SIEM systems. Regularly review incident response metrics to ensure resilience against emerging challenges.

In Cyber Security, understanding your IT environment is crucial for effective risk management and protection. The Baseline Standard Operating Environment (SOE) serves as a standardized and secure foundation for all devices within an organization. It typically includes a set of approved operating systems, applications, and configurations. A Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is a repository that tracks and manages configuration items, providing a comprehensive view of the IT infrastructure. This includes hardware, software, relationships, and configurations. A well-maintained CMDB helps in understanding the interdependencies among different components and their impact on security.

A framework will help you establish roles and responsibilities, define procedures and policies, and document and communicate your actions and findings. There are several frameworks available, such as the NIST SP 800-61, the SANS Incident Handling Process, or the ISO/IEC 27035. You should choose one that suits your organization's needs and goals, and adapt it as necessary.

Here's a 750-character answer summarizing the main points: Master your IT landscape: Map assets, vulnerabilities, and monitor for anomalies. Be the cartographer of your digital terrain, spotting breaches before they take root. Embrace a framework: Choose a structured incident response framework like NIST, SANS, or ISO/IEC 27035. It guides your team, defines roles, and ensures consistent action. Train like champions: Regularly train your team and test your plan with simulations. Sharpen their skills and refine your response against evolving threats. Learn from every scar: Analyze past incidents to identify weaknesses and patch your defenses. Every breach holds valuable insight for future battles.

A troubleshooting framework that I've used as a First Line of Support: 1. Identify the problem by getting all the needed details. 2. Establish a theory on why the issue is happening. 3. Establish a plan of how will you attack every theory you have. 4. Test theory by using established troubleshooting steps. 5. After every troubleshooting always verify the steps or changes that you've implemented. 6. Document your steps even if it does resolve what you are tackling and get help as well from all your support team.

Frameworks are simply touchstones, a collection of standards the give sound, vetted guidance on how things "should be." Committing to a framework doesn't mean (outside of legal or regulatory spaces) that you have to implement the entire thing. Frameworks help you manage your environment, and put you on footing to be proactive, and not reactive. Frameworks give structure, structure brings order, and order gives way to consistency. Which is exactly why, regardless of regulatory and legal requirements, every business should adopt a cybersecurity framework...so they are well-positioned to do the right things for their context, in the right way for their context, consistently.

Continuous Training: Information Sharing: Threat Intelligence Feeds: Simulated Exercises: Monitoring Trends: Collaboration with Security Vendors: Engagement in Cybersecurity Communities: Analyzing Past Incidents: Threat Hunting: Cross-Functional Collaboration: Regular Updates to Incident Response Plans: Red Team Exercises: Government Alerts and Advisories: Participation in Security Webinars: Engage with Threat Hunting Platforms: By adopting a proactive and collaborative approach, incident response professionals can effectively keep up with the ever-changing landscape of cybersecurity threats and enhance their ability to detect, respond to, and mitigate security incidents.

Regularly conducting red teaming or tabletop exercises, enables incident response teams to and refine their response strategies in a controlled environment.

In my experience, training, role play, and tabletop exercise bring so much value to the table and are often forgotten about. A great way to start is have one of your senior people who've experienced an incident re-create the scenario with your incident response team. This works well because the senior person knows how they responded and what brought the incident to conclusion. Feel free to involve different levels and different departments of the organization as well. If you don't have someone who can digest new threats and create these training exercises, consider engaging a third party that specializes in these high level activities. This will not only bring the latest threats as scenarios but will allow you to leverage real experience.

From my experience a strong integration link configured between your monitoring system and your ITSM tool is the backbone of your incident response methodology. This link should be tested periodically with dummy alerts to ensure timely event generation, action trigger followed by an automated pipeline to create an incident in your ITSM tool. The action trigger should also send a SMS, Email to concerned service desk to ensure a response within defined SLA.

A well-trained team is your best defense in the cyber battlefield. I've always emphasized the importance of regular, realistic training exercises. These should not just be tick-box exercises but immersive scenarios that challenge the team to think outside the box. I remember an incident where our simulation training a month prior played a pivotal role in swiftly neutralizing a real threat. It's about building a team that's not just skilled, but instinctive in its response.

As the old saying goes, "How do you get to Carnagie Hall? Practice, practice, practice." We don't like it, but its truth is undeniable, especially in Information Security. Having a talented team is wonderful, having a smart team is amazing. Both are also insufficient without practice. Think back to the USA Men's Olympic Basketball Team from years past. Some, if not the most talented names in the sport, but you can have an amazingly talented team, but shy of a plan, chemistry, trust, and practice...you still fall short. Incident Response practice brings all of those into focus. Practice, practice, practice.

Learning from incidents is a critical aspect of improving overall security posture. Here's a breakdown of how this learning process typically occurs. Identify and analyse security incidents and conduct a thorough investigation to determine the root cause of the incident. Document the incident details, including findings from the analysis and conduct Post-Incident Review. Extract key lessons from the incident, focusing on both successes and failures, Update Policies and Procedures, Provide training to staff on the lessons learned, Continuous Improvement, Information Sharing. Learning from incidents is an ongoing, dynamic process that helps organisations adapt to emerging threats and strengthen their overall cybersecurity resilience.

In the ever-shifting landscape of cyber threats, incident response must be as dynamic and adaptable as the threats themselves. At Aiden Technologies, we recognize that traditional, slower methods of response are no longer sufficient. Our approach hinges on the capability to rapidly wipe and rebuild a computer from bare metal, a process that not only mitigates the threat quickly but also minimizes downtime and operational disruption. This strategy is particularly effective against evolving threats, such as ransomware and advanced persistent threats (APTs), where the speed of response is critical.

Experience is the wise old owl in the room, and that "owl" has seen many things ... so yes, learn from every single incident. In my experience, creating and sharing an after action report (it can be simple if needed) serves as a great conversation across the entire IT team. "How did it enter?", "How did we detect?", "what would we do differently", "what areas took more time than we expected" , "what new questions do we now know we should ask?". Every incident has a lesson inside, and if applied can help make the environment more secure and agile in the security landscape we are all in. Do you have employee training? or phishing simulations? each cyber event you should ask if you even tried to prevent it with user training?

I would like to touch upon the importance of Problem Management and Root Cause Finding. If periodic, multiple, identical, incidents affect a certain business process, it is imperative that a deep root cause study should be undertaken involving infrastructure operations, partner vendor, application team members. Once the root cause has been identified it should be mitigated over a change request for production and critical workloads. Once it's resolved and established as a solution it should be documented as a case study for future references.

Every incident, no matter how small, is a lesson in disguise. In my career, I've seen organizations grow stronger from their setbacks. The key is a thorough post-incident analysis, not just to understand what went wrong, but to extract insights that can be turned into actionable improvements. It's like analyzing a lost game of chess to ensure you're better equipped for the next one. Remember, in the world of cybersecurity, complacency is the enemy.

When something is evolving like the threats targeting you, your systems and so on....so you also need to evolve your incident response. Now the only way to evolve is learn more, stay updated and implement the acquired updated knowledge. i will go a step ahead to say that be in constant touch with independent consultants, law enforcement agencies etc to learn the latest things in incident response.

Subscribe to threat intelligence feeds, security blogs, and industry publications to stay updated on the latest vulnerabilities, attack trends, and emerging tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by adversaries.

Keeping abreast of the threat landscape and its ever-evolving threat goes without saying. The threat actors grow more and more sophisticated by the minute, only by remaining proactive, informed and knowledgeable can expect to keep pace with today's adversaries. Keep your sword sharp by participating in training workshops, listening to Podcasts, reading Blogs and attending Seminars.

Common methods of staying up to date with what is happening in the CyberSec space are: - RSS feeds. Feedly and Inoreader are good choices for consolidating RSS feeds from cybersecurity threads, such as Darkreading, WeLiveSecurity and others. - Podcasts can help update you while you are busy with other chores. SANS Stormcast is a great early morning catch-up, while Unsupervised Learning provides comprehensive feedback as well. - Newsletters serve a similar purpose to RSS feeds in consolidating various articles together. Some RSS readers even allow you to subscribe to newsletters as well. - Social media, such as X (Twitter), allow for live updates from influential people in the cybersecurity field.

Imagine driving in a busy city but deprived of your sense of sight and sound. You can't see, you have no idea who is signaling what, where traffic is, or up-to-date information on how heavy traffic is or who is about to cut you off and total your car for you...or worse. Your education and information gathering abilities in Information Security are akin to driving that car, and if you aren't keeping up with the latest information, then you are, as they say, "flying blind", or in this case "driving blind" (arguably more dangerous). Compile daily sources of intelligence, be that podcasts, online communities, events, or poking around on the dark web. Daily reading is more or less required and you need to be willing to put in the time.

Cybersecurity practices are pivotal for safeguarding digital assets. Regularly assess risks, update policies, and fortify technology infrastructure. Ensure robust access controls, conduct effective incident response drills, and prioritize employee training. Stay compliant with regulations, integrate threat intelligence for proactive defense, and scrutinize vendor security. Safeguard data with encryption, uphold strong governance, allocate resources wisely, and cultivate a culture of cybersecurity awareness. Adaptability and continuous improvement are key in the ever-changing cybersecurity landscape.

First step-Stay updated on industry trends. Invest in Continuous Learning, training to stay informed about the latest attack techniques, vulnerabilities,and security best practices.Attend relevant conferences. Security Intelligence -Regularly monitor threat intelligence sources such as security blogs,vendor alerts, Subscribe to threat intelligence feeds that provide real-time information about new vulnerabilities and attack vectors. Technology Solutions:Utilize advanced security tools,Implement SIEM,IDS System,other incident response tools to detect,respond to threats effectively. Regular Assessments/Testing Conduct regular security assessments,penetration testing, vulnerability scanning to identify weaknesses in systems & applications.

As an experienced Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), I stay updated with evolving cybersecurity threats through continuous learning, industry collaboration, utilization of threat intelligence platforms, regular security audits, and maintaining adaptive incident response plans. This multi-faceted approach ensures that I’m well-equipped to handle a wide range of threats and safeguard our systems effectively.

Most important is to stay updated and then train, train and train. Training or simulation exercises should be planned which should facilitate not only the incident response but also lessons learnt and should serve towards refining the overall process. Its like Military, the more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war. So for better incident response, stay updated, and practise regularly .

There is a huge misconception about Event and Incident. Often people use these two terminologies interchangeably. Event became much wider in the current interconnected world with the new terminologies such as ‘threat’ and ‘attack’, It becomes super complex. Hence it is imperative to understand the definition of the term ‘Incident’. Incident is one such event that something already happened, you are going to figure out and fix that.

There are third-party monitoring services such as DarkTrace that can monitor for unusual activity. This could help with insider threats, credential stuffing, or breached accounts.