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Are you threatening me? – the stages of threat response.
The stages of threat response usually get mapped out in something fancy‑sounding like Threat Detection and Response (TDR) or one of those formal incident response frameworks from NIST. Translation: it’s the corporate version of “don’t panic, follow the checklist.” Think of it as the IKEA manual for cybersecurity — lots of steps, a few confusing diagrams, and if you skip one, you’ll probably end up with a breach instead of a bookshelf.
So let’s go through them together, shall we?
1. Stages of Threat Detection and Response (TDR)
Threat Detection and Response (TDR) is a cybersecurity process for identifying cyberthreats and taking steps to mitigate them quickly. The typical TDR process includes seven stages, moving from initial discovery through mitigation and future preparation:
Detection: This initial phase involves using security tools to monitor clouds, networks, endpoints, identities, and applications to surface risks and potential breaches. Security professionals also engage in cyberthreat hunting techniques to proactively uncover sophisticated threats that may evade automated detection.
Investigation: Once a risk is identified, the Security Operations Center (SOC) uses AI and other tools to verify that the cyberthreat is real. They must determine how the threat occurred and assess which company assets have been affected.
Containment: To prevent the cyberattack from spreading further, cybersecurity teams or automated tools isolate the infected devices, networks, and identities from the rest of the organization’s assets. Defining roles and duties for containment is a critical part of the incident response plan.
Eradication: Teams focus on eliminating the root cause of the security incident to completely evict the malicious actor from the environment. They also mitigate any vulnerabilities that might put the organization at risk of a similar cyberattack in the future.
Recovery: After the teams are reasonably confident that the cyberthreat or vulnerability has been removed, they bring the isolated systems back online.
Report: Depending on the incident’s severity, security teams must document what happened and how it was resolved, briefing leaders, executives, or the board. An incident response plan provides guidance for communicating with cross-functional stakeholders like lawyers, PR, and senior leaders.
Risk mitigation: To prevent a recurrence and improve future response capabilities, teams study the incident to identify necessary changes to processes and the digital environment. This evaluation ensures continuous improvement.
2. The NIST Incident Response Cycle
Many organizations follow the incident response cycle established by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This model separates the incident response process into four main stages:
Preparation: This stage involves setting up incident response policies and functions, implementing preventative measures (such as securing the network perimeter and user training), and deploying tools like threat detection and response systems.
Detection and Analysis: This stage encompasses identifying threat types, classifying signs as indicators or precursors, performing incident analysis, documenting the event, prioritizing incidents based on impact, and reporting to relevant authorities. Threat detection and response tools primarily support this stage.
Containment, Eradication, and Recovery: This is considered the most active incident response phase. It includes isolating the threat, developing containment strategies specific to the attack type, gathering legal evidence, removing compromised accounts and malware (eradication), and executing a phased recovery. TDR tools also support this stage.
Post-Incident Activity: NIST considers this the most crucial, yet often overlooked, phase. Activities include holding a "Lessons Learned" meeting to process the incident, preserving evidence and data, updating preparation for future threats, creating follow-up reports, and evaluating team performance.
TL;DR:
Spot it, squash it & ship it out — faster than you can say ‘data breach’.
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