Cybersecurity Incident Response: How to Contain, Eradicate, and Recover from Incidents

by Eric C. Thompson

Overview

Create, maintain, and manage a continual cybersecurity incident response program using the practical steps presented in this book. Don't allow your cybersecurity incident responses (IR) to fall short of the mark due to lack of planning, preparation, leadership, and management support.

Surviving an incident, or a breach, requires the best response possible. This book provides practical guidance for the containment, eradication, and recovery from cybersecurity events and incidents.

The book takes the approach that incident response should be a continual program. Leaders must understand the organizational environment, the strengths and weaknesses of the program and team, and how to strategically respond. Successful behaviors and actions required for each phase of incident response are explored in the book. Straight from NIST 800-61, these actions include:

• Planning and practicing

• Detection

• Containment

• Eradication

• Post-incident actions

What You’ll Learn

• Know the sub-categories of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework

• Understand the components of incident response

• Go beyond the incident response plan

• Turn the plan into a program that needs vision, leadership, and culture to make it successful

• Be effective in your role on the incident response team

Who This Book Is For

Cybersecurity leaders, executives, consultants, and entry-level professionals responsible for executing the incident response plan when something goes wrong

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781484238691
Publisher:	Apress
Publication date:	09/21/2018
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.80(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Eric C. Thompson is an accomplished governance, risk, and compliance professional. In his GRC role as Director of Compliance at Blue Health Intelligence (BHI), Eric leads efforts to increase cyber security maturity in several domains, including governance, policy and controls, risk management, cyber security strategy, and business alignment. He established the risk management function which includes assessment, analysis and treatments of risks, threat and vulnerability management strategy, and due diligence requirements for assessing third-party risk. Eric also assesses cybersecurity technology capabilities and recommends enhancements to current solutions and new implementations that meet risk reduction requirements.

Prior to BHI, Eric spent seven years at Ernst & Young in the Advisory practice where he specialized in helping healthcare organizations (providers, payers, and business associates) solve problems related to information security, risk management, and compliance when dealing with electronic medical records. Eric led the HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF) cybersecurity program management and third-party risk management assessments.

Eric is also a proud member of the SANS Mentor team.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. The Importance of Incident Response

· Incident Response Role in Cybersecurity Program Management

· Causes of Failure

· Changing the Culture

· Delineating between Strategy and Tactics

Chapter 2. Prerequisites

· Defined Cybersecurity Program

o Purpose and Mission

o Programmatic Approach

o Hedgehog Effect

· Identify Functions

o Asset and Sensitive data Identification

· Protection Capabilities

o Data Protection

o Information Protection

o Protective Technology

· Necessity of these functions prior to focus on Incident Response

Chapter 3. Components of Incident Response

· The Incident Response Program

o Designating a Program Owner

o Setting Clear Objectives and Goals

· Organizing the IR Capability and important definitions

o NIST 800-61

§ Identify

§ Contain

§ Eradicate

§ Recover

o NIST Cybersecurity Framework

§ Communications

§ Analysis

§ Mitigation

§ Improvements

· The Team

o Find the right people

o Develop the strategy

· Extending the Response Team

o Network Operations

o Legal

o Key Executives

· Retaining a Response Firm and Assessing Readiness

Chapter 4. The Importance of Leadership in Incident Response

· Leadership Qualities

· Creating Culture

· Alignment of the Team

· Preparing to Handle Incidents

o Tools (playbooks/ checklists/ logs)

o Processes and Implementation

o Practice, Practice, Practice

§ Technical and Executive responders

Chapter 5. Cyber risks and the Mandiant Kill Chain - Anticipating Attack Vectors

· Vulnerabilities in the Kill Chain Path

· Potential Attack Scenarios

· Effective Triage

Chapter 6. Detection and Monitoring Capabilities

· Understanding the Present Capabilities

· Training and Awareness – Empowering End Users

Chapter 7. Two Common Attack Vectors

· Phishing attacks

o Types of malware/ ransomware

o Challenges in detecting malware

· OWASP vulnerabilities and web penetration attacks

o Detecting and monitoring vulnerabilities

o Ensuring patching and remediation standards are met

Chapter 8. Containment

· Choosing a containment strategy

o Containment of Malware Attacks

o Containment of Ransomware Attacks

o Containment of Web Application Attacks

· Focusing on the Strategy Not Identifying the Attacker

· Managing Executive Expectations

Chapter 9. Evidence Gathering

· Roles and responsibilities

· Chain of Custody

· Assess capabilities, engage experts and update plan

Chapter 10. Eradication

· Identify affected hosts

· Remediating Affected Assets

Chapter 11. Recovery

· Returning systems to normal operations

· Press relations and managing reputational damage

Chapter 12. Post-Incident Response

· Lessons learned

· Adjusting the plan

Chapter 13. This is a Full-Time Job

· Find the Right People

· Adjusting the Strategy

· Keep up with the Pace of Change

· Continue to Lead