Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep dive. We're here to cut through
Speaker 1: the noise and really get to the core of complex topics.
Speaker 1: Today we're tackling something absolutely vital, though maybe a bit
Speaker 1: technical sounding, cybersecurity incident response. We're diving into erics E.
Speaker 1: Thompson's book Cybersecurity Incident Response, How to Contain, Eradicate, and Recover,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole nine yards. Our goal to pull
Speaker 1: out the key insights, give you that clear understanding of
Speaker 1: how organizations actually handle cyber attacks. Think of it as
Speaker 1: a shortcut to grasping the digital battle plan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, battle plan is a great way to put it, because, honestly,
Speaker 2: it's not just about the tech. It really comes down
Speaker 2: to strategy, people, processes. Get the response right, you protect
Speaker 2: your reputation, your bottom line. Get it wrong well.
Speaker 1: Well, and getting it wrong can be incredibly public, can it.
Speaker 1: Why is this response phase just so critical beyond the
Speaker 1: immediate fix?
Speaker 2: Well, think about it. Even the best defenses aren't foolproof.
Speaker 2: Something eventually gets through. When that happens, how the company reacts,
Speaker 2: that becomes the public face of their entire security effort.
Speaker 2: We saw it with Target back in what twenty fourteen
Speaker 2: and Equifax in twenty seventeen. Huge breaches, sure, but the
Speaker 2: criticism that lasted was about the response itself. Core communication
Speaker 2: seemed unprepared. That stuff sticks.
Speaker 1: So it's the handling the grace under pressure almost as
Speaker 1: much as stopping the attack itself. Where do organizations typically
Speaker 1: stumble when they're hit? Oh?
Speaker 2: The pitfalls are pretty common, often organizational, not just technical.
Speaker 2: Big one, lack of real planning. They might have a document,
Speaker 2: but it's not an actionable playbooks, just.
Speaker 1: A checklist pretty much.
Speaker 2: Then there's lack of preparation, no practice, no muscle memory.
Speaker 2: So when things get real panic, bad decisions and leadership
Speaker 2: is key. Lack of decisive leadership or worse management, criticizing
Speaker 2: necessary steps like you know, taking critical systems offline mid
Speaker 2: crisis disaster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, undermining the team right when they need support most exactly.
Speaker 2: It shows instant response isn't just an IT thing, it's
Speaker 2: a core business function. These constant attention, testing, improvement just
Speaker 2: an annual drill.
Speaker 1: That makes total sense. So to avoid those pitfalls, you
Speaker 1: need a solid foundation. Where does an organization even start
Speaker 1: building that? What are the must have right?
Speaker 2: You can't just bolt on incident response. It has to
Speaker 2: sit on top of good basic security hygiene think NIST
Speaker 2: cybersecurity framework, the identify and protect functions, strong access control,
Speaker 2: protecting data, properly secure hardware, managing vulnerabilities, decent network protection
Speaker 2: like firewalls, the fundamental the fundamentals. Without those, your response
Speaker 2: team is fighting with one hand tied behind their back.
Speaker 1: Okay, And there's a specific guide for the response part
Speaker 1: itself right NIST SP eight hundred and sixty.
Speaker 2: One YEP Special Publication eight hundred and sixty one. That's
Speaker 2: the blueprint. It helps set up the capability, defines how
Speaker 2: to handle incidents. It stresses that it's not just technical.
Speaker 1: Because it's a business problem.
Speaker 2: Ultimately precisely, and it clarifies terms people often mix up.
Speaker 2: Like an event that's just anything unusual, a weird email
Speaker 2: gets quarantined. Maybe an adverse event is more serious system
Speaker 2: out It could be accidental, could be malicious, But an
Speaker 2: incident that's a confirmed violation policy, broken assets threatened, like
Speaker 2: an insider walking out with data they shouldn't have.
Speaker 1: Getting those distinctions right must be crucial for knowing how
Speaker 1: seriously to take something. Absolutely triage depends on it, and
Speaker 1: the guide also pushes for clear policies a solid plan,
Speaker 1: even a mission statement. I like that healthcare example, relentlessly
Speaker 1: protect our patient's health information. That clarity seems vital. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got frameworks, tech basics, but you mentioned people. This
Speaker 1: feels like where things get really interesting. Best tech in
Speaker 1: the world won't help if the team or culture isn't right.
Speaker 1: What makes a strong leader here, it's a.
Speaker 2: Mix of things, really. First passion, You got to care
Speaker 2: deeply to push through budget fights, new threats, long nights sure.
Speaker 2: Then humility knowing you don't know everything, empowering the specialists
Speaker 2: on your team, not trying to be the hero who
Speaker 2: knows it.
Speaker 1: All, so trusting the experts, trusting.
Speaker 2: Them and listening. That's the next one. Listening, building that
Speaker 2: trust before a crisis hits. Hearing concerns daily, not just
Speaker 2: when alarms are blurring. And when you've listened, you need decisiveness,
Speaker 2: make the call based on the facts, even if it
Speaker 2: means disrupting the business.
Speaker 1: Instills confidence even the tough calls, like taking things offline.
Speaker 2: Especially those, And finally, emotional intelligence managing your own stress,
Speaker 2: your own reactions, and understanding your team stress empathy basically,
Speaker 2: but also keeping a levelhead.
Speaker 1: That's a powerful combination. It's about character as much as competence,
Speaker 1: and the culture piece the book mentions open Myers above
Speaker 1: the line, how does that fit?
Speaker 2: It's about creating a culture focused on clear purpose like
Speaker 2: protect our assets relentlessly, then driving intention focus and continuous learning,
Speaker 2: being purposeful and skillful, especially under pressure.
Speaker 1: So it's embedding that mindset exactly.
Speaker 2: And change models like Cotter's or LUNs can help. They
Speaker 2: provide frameworks to make incident response a core value, not
Speaker 2: just you know, an IT department task.
Speaker 1: Okay, leadership and ca culture sorted, Let's get into the
Speaker 1: plane itself. What's the core strategy? What are we actually
Speaker 1: trying to achieve with an incident response plan?
Speaker 2: Well, the big goals are pretty clear. Protect the company's assets,
Speaker 2: meet compliance rules, minimize bad press, limit financial damage, and
Speaker 2: keep customer disruption low. It's the playbook for hitting those
Speaker 2: targets during chaos, and typically it breaks down into phases.
Speaker 2: First identification, spotting the event quickly. This uses everything from
Speaker 2: fancy intrusion detection systems and sims to even just an
Speaker 2: alert employee noticing something weird. Automation's key here. That data
Speaker 2: volume is huge.
Speaker 1: Okay, detect it fast, Then what.
Speaker 2: Containment, Stop the bleeding, limit the damage spreading it. Then eradication,
Speaker 2: get the attacker and everything they left.
Speaker 1: Behind out clean sweep right.
Speaker 2: Fourth is recovery, get systems back online, working properly and
Speaker 2: hopefully stronger than before. And finally, the crucial bit that
Speaker 2: often gets skipped post incident, review the lessons learned, what work,
Speaker 2: what didn't? How do we update the plan?
Speaker 1: You mentioned these phases aren't always neat and linear. That
Speaker 1: seems important.
Speaker 2: Oh definitely. You might be containing one thing while still
Speaker 2: identifying other compromise systems, or you might need to loop
Speaker 2: back during recovery if eradication wasn't complete.
Speaker 1: It's dynamic and everyone needs to know their role right,
Speaker 1: not just the tech team.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, legal, compliance, pr senior management. Everyone has a part.
Speaker 2: The plan needs to define that clearly. Going off script,
Speaker 2: as the book says, just leads to chaos.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's our plan, But effective defense means understanding
Speaker 1: the attackers plan too. How do organizations anticipate what the
Speaker 1: adversary will do?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you need to think like the attacker. Frameworks like
Speaker 2: the Mandy and cyber attack life cycle used to be
Speaker 2: called the kill chain. Help here they map out the
Speaker 2: typical stages an attacker goes through.
Speaker 1: Okay, break that down for us, It's.
Speaker 2: Usually seen in three broad phases. Phase one is initial compromise.
Speaker 2: Starts with reconnaissance, googling you, checking LinkedIn, scanning network with
Speaker 2: tools like SHOWDAN, maybe harvesting emails exactly. Then the initial
Speaker 2: compromise itself. Maybe a fishing link gets flicked, maybe they
Speaker 2: exploit a known vulnerability. Once they're in, they establish a foothold,
Speaker 2: plant some malware, steal some credentials to ensure they can
Speaker 2: get back in.
Speaker 1: Okay, they're inside, what's phase two?
Speaker 2: Phase two is iterative. This is where they work to
Speaker 2: expand their access. They try to escalate privileges, get admin rights.
Speaker 2: They do intro a reconnaissance map out your network from
Speaker 2: the inside. They move laterally, jump from system to system,
Speaker 2: and they try to maintain persistence, set up more ways
Speaker 2: to stay in even if one gets.
Speaker 1: Found spreading out, digging in deeper.
Speaker 2: Then phase three is complete the mission. This is the
Speaker 2: objective could be stealing data, exultration, changing data, or just
Speaker 2: destroying it, whatever their goal was.
Speaker 1: Understanding that whole sequence must help defenders know where to look,
Speaker 1: what kind of activity signals which phase precisely.
Speaker 2: It helps prioritize alerts and it links straight into risk assessment. Remember,
Speaker 2: risk is about a threat hitting a vulnerability and causing
Speaker 2: an impact confidentiality, integrity, or availability.
Speaker 1: Like that server example, an unpatched Windows two thousand and
Speaker 1: three server in a locked closet low risk, same server
Speaker 1: connected to the internet high risk. Context is everything exactly right?
Speaker 2: And think about practical examples like the OWAS Top ten
Speaker 2: for web apps. Things like injection flaws, broken authentication, exposing
Speaker 2: sensitive data. These are the common vulnerabilities attackers target in
Speaker 2: phase one or two. Knowing them helps you prioritize defenses.
Speaker 1: It sounds like detection alone needs a whole arsenal of tools.
Speaker 1: How many layers are we talking about.
Speaker 2: It's definitely multi layered. You need things like Data loss
Speaker 2: prevention DLP that watches for sensitive data going where it
Speaker 2: shouldn't leaving via email being saved to a USB drive
Speaker 2: sitting unencrypted.
Speaker 1: Somewhere, trying to plug the leaks right.
Speaker 2: Then, endpoint Detection and Response EDR that monitors laptop servers
Speaker 2: looking for weird changes, processes acting suspiciously. It's like a
Speaker 2: security camera on each device. You also need network traffic analysis,
Speaker 2: watching the data flow looking for strange patterns, maybe huge
Speaker 2: uploads or spikes in DNS traffic which can signal malware
Speaker 2: calling home and the big one SAM security, Incident and
Speaker 2: event management. This pulls logs from everywhere firewalls, servers, applications, databases,
Speaker 2: and tries to correlate events, find patterns that match known
Speaker 2: attacks based on predefined rules or use cases.
Speaker 1: That sounds like finding needles in haystacks.
Speaker 2: It can be. Tuning is critical to avoid alert fatigue.
Speaker 2: But you also can't forget the humans empowering end users
Speaker 2: through training phishing simulations. They're often the first to spot
Speaker 2: something fishy literally.
Speaker 1: So it's tech and people a whole ecosystem.
Speaker 2: Definitely, plus logs from firewalls, intrusion detection systems, basic OS logs,
Speaker 2: everything feeds.
Speaker 1: In okay detection triggers an alert, Now the clock sticking containment?
Speaker 1: How do you stop the spread? First?
Speaker 2: You hunt for indicators of compromise IOCs. These are the
Speaker 2: attacker's fingerprints, specific filelashes, IP addresses, they use, weird registry keys.
Speaker 2: Intel feeds often provide these. Find the badness, find it
Speaker 2: and find all of it. Then you isolate unplug the machine,
Speaker 2: maybe put it in sleep mode to preserve memory. Often
Speaker 2: better for forensics, use network rules firewall DNS to block
Speaker 2: its communication.
Speaker 1: Definitely while preserving evidence crucial.
Speaker 2: You need forensic images, exact copies of the disk and
Speaker 2: memory for later analysis. And you correlate data from EDR
Speaker 2: seam network traffic to see how far.
Speaker 1: The infection spread and the strategy changes depending on the attack,
Speaker 1: right like malware versus a doss attack.
Speaker 2: Absolutely for malware or ransomware, you verify it, maybe upload
Speaker 2: a sample to virus total, run in a sandbox, identify
Speaker 2: its command and control C two traffic, then use eedarcium
Speaker 2: to find every machine infected.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: For denial of service, you're mapping the attack traffic, finding
Speaker 2: the source ips, blocking them at the edge, maybe even
Speaker 2: calling your ISP for help. Sometimes you temporarily disable the
Speaker 2: service under attack or scale up resources.
Speaker 1: What about physical like a laptop.
Speaker 2: Report it, assess the data sensitivity, try to track it
Speaker 2: or wipe it remotely if you have that capability. And
Speaker 2: this is often where forensic investigators come in, especially external specialists.
Speaker 2: They know how to collect evidence properly. For potential legal action,
Speaker 2: you need those relationships set up before you need.
Speaker 1: Them, makes sense, pre approved contracts.
Speaker 2: Exactly, And all this time the team lead is probably
Speaker 2: dealing with executive expectations, trying to provide updates without speculating,
Speaker 2: sticking to the facts. That's a tough balancing act.
Speaker 1: Okay, the attacks contained damage stopped. Now getting rid of
Speaker 1: it and getting back to.
Speaker 2: Normal, right radication, removing every trace of the attacker, malware files,
Speaker 2: registry changes, dodgy user accounts that they created. Sometimes for
Speaker 2: really deep infections like rootkits, wiping and restoring from a known,
Speaker 2: good backup is the only safe way.
Speaker 1: Don't want leave anything behind, Nope.
Speaker 2: Then recovery, patch the vulnerability they exploited, maybe with an
Speaker 2: emergency change request, scan again to be sure it's fixed,
Speaker 2: Restore data from backups. The aim is to come back
Speaker 2: online more secure than you.
Speaker 1: Were before, building back better. Essentially, that's the goal. And
Speaker 1: then that step you mentioned earlier, the post mortem, the
Speaker 1: post incident review.
Speaker 2: The lessons learned so vital yet so often skipped because
Speaker 2: everyone's exhausted and wants to move on. But this is
Speaker 2: where you ask what went right? What went wrong? How
Speaker 2: do we update our plan? Our tools are training.
Speaker 1: And metrics help there.
Speaker 2: Huge help, time to detect, time to respond, contain eradicate
Speaker 2: tracking those drives. Real improvement stops you making the same
Speaker 2: mistakes twice.
Speaker 1: Let's make this concrete. The book has that story about
Speaker 1: American Widget. Can you walk us through that? It really
Speaker 1: highlights some of these points.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great cautionary tale. So American Widget makes
Speaker 2: high end stuff, has wealthy clients, celebrities, politicians, very sensitive
Speaker 2: customer data, valuable manufacturing secrets.
Speaker 1: Okay, high states definitely.
Speaker 2: It starts kind of small. A finance manager's laptop keeps
Speaker 2: crashing blue screens annoying but maybe just hardware. Then a
Speaker 2: manufacturing calls his main database is locked ransomware. They won
Speaker 2: a million bucks.
Speaker 1: Ouch.
Speaker 2: The information security manager the ism is actually relieved when
Speaker 2: they find they can restore the database from backups. He
Speaker 2: thinks youugh dodged a bullet and focuses all his effort
Speaker 2: on figuring out the ransomware. The cisso though, is uneasy,
Speaker 2: knows those manufacturing plans are gold. Ransomware seems messy for
Speaker 2: stealing plans.
Speaker 1: And disconnect and understanding the assets exactly. Ah.
Speaker 2: Fast forward a few months suddenly VP customers get blackmail
Speaker 2: emails pay up or we release your purchase history. It
Speaker 2: contains real sensitive account data.
Speaker 1: Oh no.
Speaker 2: Annextations the second incident response kicks off. Logs show a
Speaker 2: sales manager downloaded all those customer histories at two AM
Speaker 2: weeks earlier. Then a sharp analyst remembers that sales manager's
Speaker 2: laptop also had weird blue screen issues on the same
Speaker 2: day as the finance managers, right before the ransomware hit.
Speaker 1: AH. Connecting the dots.
Speaker 2: Right, forensics comes in digs deep the truth. The ransom
Speaker 2: war was a complete diversion smoke and mirrors. While the
Speaker 2: security team was frantically restoring the database, the real attack
Speaker 2: was happening silently. The attackers used the initial foothold on
Speaker 2: those manager's laptops to steal the customer data, likely exfiltrating
Speaker 2: it slowly using something subtle like DNS tunneling.
Speaker 1: Wow, So they focus on the loud bang missed the
Speaker 1: quiet theft.
Speaker 2: Precisely, they lacked a formal IR plan. They didn't grasp
Speaker 2: the true criticality of different data types. That customer list
Speaker 2: was arguably more valuable than the manufacturing dB. In this context,
Speaker 2: the ism got tunnel vision on the ransomware and the
Speaker 2: company paid a huge price in reputation in customer trust.
Speaker 1: That's a powerful lesson. The aha moment is realizing how
Speaker 1: easily attackers can misdirect and why knowing your real crown
Speaker 1: jewels is paramount.
Speaker 2: Couldn't say it better.
Speaker 1: And that American widget story drives home that this isn't
Speaker 1: a one time setup. It's ongoing, continuous.
Speaker 2: Absolutely that brings us to continuous monitoring. Nissed SP eight
Speaker 2: hundred one THIRSTS seven talks about this. It's about constantly
Speaker 2: checking if your controls are working is expected, if their
Speaker 2: meeting management's risk tolerance, are they effective? Are they producing
Speaker 2: the right outcomes. It's keeping your finger on the pulse.
Speaker 2: It's never done, never done, And things like network segmentation
Speaker 2: play into this too. Making it harder for attackers to
Speaker 2: move laterally isn't just prevention. It creates more trip wires,
Speaker 2: more places where you're continuous monitoring can actually detect them sooner,
Speaker 2: better data points for response, So it all interconnects.
Speaker 1: Prevention, detection, responds, continuous improvement.
Speaker 2: It's a cycle, and leaders need to keep growing to technically, yes,
Speaker 2: but also in their leadership skills, Balancing budgets, priorities, team morale.
Speaker 2: It's a constant juggling act.
Speaker 1: Well, we've certainly covered a lot of ground, from the
Speaker 1: shock of a breach, through the planning, the leadership, the tech,
Speaker 1: the phases of response. It's complex, it really is.
Speaker 2: I think the key takeaway is that effective incident response
Speaker 2: is holistic. It needs strong leadership, a clear strategy everyone understands,
Speaker 2: constant practice that muscle man, and a really deep knowledge
Speaker 2: of your own assets and how attackers think.
Speaker 1: So for everyone listening, maybe the question to reflect on
Speaker 1: is what are the real hidden risks in your world,
Speaker 1: the things you might overlook if focused on the obvious,
Speaker 1: and how ready are you really to respond when that
Speaker 1: unexpected incident hits. Thank you for joining us on this
Speaker 1: deep dive. We hope you feel better equipped to think
Speaker 1: critically about cybersecurity incident response.