It’s widely understood, that is, except when it comes to incident response. For whatever reason, incident response at most organizations remains largely a set of manual processes. Hard drives are combed manually for incident data. So are servers. Oftentimes, as a result, evidence in volatile memory is lost. And, in manual ad hoc efforts, confusion often reigns as to who should respond and how. In large organizations, where there are complex lines over who owns what assets and processes, such decisions are anything but easy. Determining who should respond to each incident as it is already underway wastes valuable time. We would never take this approach in the physical world — imagine a bank with no armed guards, no security cameras and no clearly defined emergency processes in place.
Additionally, organizations that rely heavily on manual processes would have to dispatch an expert to the location where the affected systems reside just to be able to perform their analysis and prepare for the eventual response.
There are clear costs associated with all of those aspects of manual response. But there are additional costs, too. First, with automated response, you can immediately validate the attack and prioritize high risk assets, reduce the number of infected or breached systems, and even more quickly contain an ongoing attack. This alone can be the difference between confidential data and intellectual property being stolen, or systems being disrupted. It also can be the difference between regulated data being disclosed, triggering a mandatory breach notification, or an incident that doesn't go any further than a single end user’s endpoint being infiltrated.
There are many ways automation can help to turn this around, and help put time on your side. For instance, with an automated incident response capability, such as that provided by EnCase Cybersecurity, it’s possible to integrate existing security information and alerting systems to ensure response occurs as the alert is generated. This capability dramatically reduces mean-time-to-response and provides the right individuals’ time-sensitive information they need to accurately assess the source and scope of the problem, as well as the risk it presents your data.
This automation also includes the ability to take snapshots of all affected endpoints and servers, so that immediate analysis of the exact state of the machine at the time of the incident can be performed. This is a great way to identify what is actually going on in the system, such as uncovering unknown or hidden processes, running dynamic link libraries, and other stealth activities. As threats grow increasingly clandestine, this speed is all the more important.
There’s also a facet of our technology that’s often not considered part of response, but actually is, and that’s endpoint data discovery. This way, you can understand where sensitive data exists across your enterprise, remove from errant locations, and ensure data policies are being followed to reduce the risk of data ex-filtration. By integrating that capability with detection systems, you can be assured to quickly understand the risk a threat presents any potentially affected machine based on its’ sensitive data profile and prioritize other response activities accordingly.
Finally, to ensure that the process is efficient, it’s crucial to have solid workflow processes in place. This makes it much more straightforward to quickly assign incidents to the right analysts, or teams, as well as track investigations from open to close.
It’s impossible to detail the exact monetary return of effective, automated incident response – but it’s certain that such automation will save you significantly. It will reduce your exposure, manpower required to respond, speed time to identification and remediation of a breach, and very likely limit breach impact. This is especially the case when caught early. With a malicious breach costing more than $200 per record, and breach records running into the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands per incident – not to forget regulatory sanctions, fines, and potential lawsuits – anything reasonable that can be done to mitigate the impact of the inevitable breach should be done.
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