Incident Planning - 4.8
Summary
Incident planning involves preparing for and responding to potential security incidents. Tabletop exercises simulate incident response scenarios for discussion, while simulations test real-world response capabilities. Root cause analysis identifies the underlying causes of incidents to prevent recurrence, and threat hunting proactively searches for vulnerabilities and indicators of compromise to improve security before breaches occur.
Notes:
Testing Exercises
- Tabletop: A structured discussion-based exercise in which team members walk through the incident response process in a hypothetical scenario. No actions are taken; instead, participants discuss their roles, responsibilities, and decision-making in the face of a simulated incident.
- Simulation: A more realistic exercise in which attacks are simulated to test the organization’s incident response capabilities. These can include phishing, vishing (voice phishing), data exfiltration, or other attack vectors, with the purpose of identifying vulnerabilities and improving detection and response.
Root Cause Analysis
- A systematic process of identifying and reviewing the root cause of an incident. This analysis focuses on understanding the underlying factors that allowed the incident to occur, such as configuration issues, unpatched vulnerabilities, or human errors, to prevent recurrence.
Threat Hunting
- A proactive approach to searching for potential threats or vulnerabilities within a system before they can be exploited by attackers. Threat hunting involves actively seeking indicators of compromise (IoCs) and weaknesses, rather than waiting for security alerts.
- The organization performs internal threat hunting to detect and remediate potential threats, improving its overall security posture and reducing the risk of undetected breaches.