[
  {
    "Title": "How to Create an Incident Response Plan: 5 Basic Steps - Bitsight",
    "URL": "https://www.bitsight.com/blog/how-create-incident-response-plan-5-steps",
    "Query": "incident response procedures",
    "Content cleaned": "Yes (reduced from 10246 to 7988 chars)",
    "Content": "# How to Create an Incident Response Plan: 5 Steps\nNo matter how robust your cyber defenses are, there is a high likelihood that your organization will experience a cybersecurity incident\u2014either directly or as a result of a supply chain attack.\nImplementing a cybersecurity incident response plan can help you effectively address a cyber event, reduce disruptions to your business operations, and ensure compliance with regulations.\n## What is an Incident Response Plan?\nAn incident response plan outlines the actionable steps required to prepare for, respond to, and recover from a cyberattack.\nIt can be a crucial differentiator in how your organization contains an attack, limits damage, responds to regulatory oversight, and ensures employee and customer trust. Incident response also plays into your wider risk management strategy and informs decision-making about security performance improvements, investments in controls, and other steps needed to improve your overall security posture.\n## A Typical Incident Response Plan Template:\n1. An overview of **why cybersecurity incident response is important**\n2. An **incident response framework**, or how your organization approaches incident response. NIST defines an incident response framework as having four stages:\n   - Preparation and prevention\n   - Detection and analysis\n   - Containment, eradication, and recovery\n   - Post-incident activity\n3. **What happens during each phase** of incident response\n4. **Roles and responsibilities**\n5. **A communication plan**\n6. **KPIs to measure the effectiveness** of your cybersecurity incident response\n## 5 Steps to Building an Incident Response Plan\nThere are several resources that can help you develop your incident response plan. In addition to NIST, there is SANS Incident Management, which emphasizes preparation, identification, containment, eradication, recovery, and lessons learned. CISA also offers a useful cheat sheet of Incident Response Plan (IRP) Basics.\nWhatever method you choose, below are five important steps your cybersecurity incident response plan should cover:\n### Step 1: Preparation\nPreparation is key to an effective response. Start by developing a policy for how you will manage your incident response, what actions must be prioritized, and who will lead incident handling. Keep the plan simple and not too detailed because you'll need to share it with business executives to get their agreement and support.\nNext, assemble your incident response team. Because cyberattacks have far reaching business, operational, customer, and regulatory impacts, include stakeholders from various disciplines including IT, management, legal, HR, and communications/public relations. To ensure buy-in, explain why cybersecurity incident response matters, each individual\u2019s role and responsibilities in the event of an incident, and how an effective plan can help everyone prepare to handle any cyber threats or data breaches.\nIf you have a global team, you may want to create decentralized teams for each region, each reporting to a single incident response leader.\nIt\u2019s also a best practice to assign a specific person to be in charge of communicating with your management team. This may be a CISO or other business leader. The key is to have someone who can convey updates about incident response in language the C-suite and board will understand.\nRevisit your policy and procedures frequently and ensure that your incident response team is regularly trained and prepared to respond.\n### Step 2: Detection and analysis\nTake steps to put security safeguards in place. This way, you can quickly determine if your organization is vulnerable or has already been attacked, so you can take action to prevent further harm.\nFor example, attack surface analytics and continuous monitoring can pinpoint vulnerabilities in your network that attackers look to exploit and help prioritize the most critical risks for proactive remediation. To detect and analyze a potential breach, layer in endpoint monitoring, firewalls, intrusion detection, and security incident event management (SIEM) tools.\n### Step 3: Containment, eradication, and recovery\nDuring this phase, the incident response team is focused on mitigating the effects of an incident. To understand what systems are affected, look to your security management tools for intelligence and indicators of compromise, then shut down or isolate these devices, address the root cause, and restore systems.\nThis phase is guided by how critical the data or assets are, how severe the incident is, and business continuity imperatives. Here, you can score incidents (also known as incident classification) based on the impact they may have on your operations, the systems or data at risk, and the ability to recover.\nDon\u2019t forget to include a process for documenting the actions you take and any evidence of compromise collected. This will be instrumental in the next step of your incident response plan and future incident response process planning.\n### Step 4: Post-incident activity\nAfter any cybersecurity incident, hold a post mortem meeting to discuss what happened and your organization\u2019s response, including what worked, what didn\u2019t, and what can be improved. Position it as an open and blameless forum for sharing lessons learned with senior leaders and stakeholders. Invite input and feedback on how the organization can be better prepared if or when another incident occurs.\nThe incident response team leader will use this setting to report the following:\n- Incident timeline\n- Response metrics, such as mean time to discovery (MTTD) and mean time to repair (MTTR)\n- Impacts (data, systems, business disruption, customers and employees, etc.)\n- Containment and remediation measures\nIf your organization is subject to regulations that require reporting of cyber incidents, such as the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission\u2019s (SEC) new cybersecurity disclosure requirements, factor this into your post-incident activity. SEC rules require publicly traded companies to disclose any \u201cmaterial\u201d cybersecurity incident within four business days. Read more about what a \u201cmaterial\u201d cybersecurity incident is and best practices for incident disclosure.\n### Step 5: Test your incident response process\nDon\u2019t wait until an incident occurs to test your incident response plan. Conduct regular drills and simulation exercises. For instance, one month you can have your incident response team simulate their response to a ransomware attack, and in the following month, shift your focus to another security event, such as a supply chain cybersecurity attack.\n## Strengthen your cyber resilience with Bitsight\nAs your attack surface expands\u2014on-premise, to the cloud, and across geographies\u2014achieving cyber resilience is challenging. It requires a comprehensive security program and continual efforts to respond to and mitigate risks.\nHowever, incident response and recovery is also about ensuring that similar incidents don\u2019t happen again.\nTo do this you must determine the root cause of a breach and remediate the issue. Using actionable data from Bitsight, you can get to the root cause of a vulnerability\u2014such as outdated software or a misconfigured system\u2014and where risk continues to exist. From there you can implement a targeted mitigation strategy that helps you achieve cyber resilience. You can also use Bitsight to measure security performance improvement over time and show executives how cyber resilient your organization is."
  },
  {
    "Title": "What Is an Incident Response Plan (IRP)? | Fortra's Digital Guardian",
    "URL": "https://www.digitalguardian.com/blog/what-incident-response-plan-irp",
    "Query": "incident response procedures",
    "Content cleaned": "Yes (reduced from 16302 to 13066 chars)",
    "Content": "**An Incident Response Plan (IRP) is a strategic document that outlines the procedures to be followed when a cyber threat or security incident occurs. This plan details the steps to detect, respond to, recover from, and prevent future incidents.**\nIt guides the organization in managing the incident, limiting the damage, reducing recovery time and costs, and ensuring continuity of operations.\n## Why Is Having an Incident Response Plan Important?\nHaving an Incident Response Plan (IRP) is important for several reasons:\n- **Minimizes Damage:** An IRP can help minimize the damage caused by a cyberattack or breach by providing precise and quick action steps.\n- **Reduces Recovery Time and Cost:** With a clear plan, organizations can reduce the time it takes to recover from an attack, limiting the financial impact.\n- **Protects Company Reputation:** A well-managed response to an incident can help maintain customer trust and protect the organization's reputation.\n- **Ensures Compliance:** Many industries require businesses to have an IRP in place to ensure compliance with standards and regulations and data security.\n- **Improves Incident Management:** An IRP allows for a structured response to incidents, reducing chaos, ensuring clear communication, and enhancing team coordination.\n- **Enhances Cybersecurity Posture:** It enables organizations to learn from past incidents, adapt, and improve their security stance.\n- **Provides Continuity:** An effective IRP ensures business continuity by providing a planned approach to resume normal business operations after an incident.\n- **Prevention of Future Threats:** The post-incident analysis helps an organization to understand the threat vector and take preventive measures to avoid such breaches in the future.\n## How Do IRPs Work?\nIncident Response Plans (IRPs) provide a structured, systematic approach to handling security incidents or attacks. However, the specific steps and strategies within each phase can vary depending on the nature of the incident, the industry, and the organization's specific IRP.\nHere's a breakdown of how IRPs typically operate:\n**Preparation:** This first phase includes establishing an incident response team, setting up communication lines, outlining roles, preparing the necessary tools and resources, and training staff. It also requires an understanding of the organization's crucial IT assets that must be protected.\n**Identification:** The IRP is activated when a breach is detected or suspected. In this phase, the incident is confirmed, its severity assessed, and the response team notified.\n**Containment:** Next, immediate steps are taken to limit the spread of the breach and prevent it from affecting more parts of the system. Containment strategies may involve isolating the affected components, changing passwords, blocking IP addresses, or installing firewalls.\n**Eradication:** After containment, the root cause of the breach is identified and removed. This may involve deleting malicious code, patching vulnerabilities, and improving firewalls or security systems.\n**Recovery:** This phase involves restoring the systems to their regular operation\u2019s status quo. This may include restoring data from backups, validating the recovery, and continuously monitoring systems for signs of recurrence.\n**Post-Incident Review:** Once the incident has been fully handled, it is reviewed, including what caused it and how it was handled. Lessons learned from the review are then incorporated into updates of the IRP to improve future responses and prevent recurrence.\n## What Are the IRP Features?\nFeatures of an Incident Response Plan (IRP) may include:\n**Comprehensive Procedures**\nAn IRP is a blueprint designed to successfully counteract cyber threats by outlining the processes that should be followed in the case of a security incident.\n**Defined Roles and Responsibilities**\nThis document outlines the roles and responsibilities of the incident response team members, senior management, and other stakeholders in case of a cyber attack.\n**Communication Strategy**\nThis strategy contains clear and concise communication guidelines to ensure effective collaboration between teams and, if necessary, communication with external stakeholders.\n**Incident Identification**\nProcedures to identify and validate that a security incident has occurred.\n**Containment Strategy**\nGuidelines for containing the incident and mitigating further damage to the organization.\n**Recovery Measures**\nPlans for restoring affected systems or networks to their normal, operational state.\n**Post-Incident Analysis**\nProcesses to analyze the incident, learn from it, and further strengthen security measures.\n**Regular Revision**\nA plan for regular updates and amendments according to the evolution of cyber threats or changes in the organization's structure or resources.\n**Training Requirements**\nRegular training sessions for team members ensure everyone understands and executes the plan effectively.\n**Compliance Checkpoints**\nEstablishes clearly defined steps to ensure the organization conforms to necessary legal, regulatory, and industry standards.\n## How an Incident Response Plan Helps Improve Security\nAn Incident Response Plan (IRP) is integral to a company's cybersecurity strategy. It is designed to handle and manage the fallout from a cyber attack or other security incidents. An IRP helps improve security in a multitude of ways:\n- **Proactive Approach:** An IRP helps identify potential weaknesses in your cybersecurity infrastructure, enabling you to reinforce these weak points before a cyber incident happens.\n- **Rapid Response:** Time is crucial in handling a cybersecurity incident. An IRP sets the stage for a swift, coordinated response that can help mitigate harm and limit the scope of the breach.\n- **Clear Communication:** By clarifying roles and setting out procedures, an IRP helps ensure clear lines of communication, thus minimizing confusion and speeding up incident response.\n- **Learning and Adapting:** An IRP typically includes a post-analysis phase to assess how every incident was handled. The lessons learned can strengthen the cybersecurity strategy and improve future incident responses.\n- **Regulatory Compliance:** Some regulatory bodies require organizations to have an IRP as part of their data compliance mandate. Having a solid IRP helps ensure you meet these legal and regulatory obligations.\n- **Enhanced Employee Training:** Regular testing and updating of the IRP help employees understand their roles during an incident, thereby reducing response time.\n- **Reputation Management:** A well-executed IRP can reduce recovery time and potentially negatively impact the company's reputation and customer trust.\n- **Continuity Planning:** An IRP is a crucial part of business continuity planning. It ensures that your business can maintain critical operations even during a security incident.\n- **Protection of Assets:** The timely measures described in an IRP protect the company's critical data and assets and prevent further losses.\n## The Key Components of An Effective Incident Response Plan\nAn effective Incident Response Plan (IRP) generally consists of the following key components:\n**Preparation:** This should include identifying and assessing potential threats and vulnerabilities, as well as inventorying crucial assets and their protections. It should also include training incident response team members and other staff.\n**Incident Response Team:** A defined team responsible for managing the incident response process. The team should have defined roles and responsibilities.\n**Incident Definition:** Clear definition of what constitutes an incident, including variables such as severity and type.\n**Incident Detection and Reporting:** Procedures for detecting, analyzing, and reporting incidents promptly, utilizing resources like intrusion detection systems, logs, and reports.\n**Incident Classification and Prioritization:** Procedures to classify and prioritize incidents based on parameters like potential damage, attack vectors, targeted systems, and regulatory compliance requirements.\n**Incident Response Procedures:** Detailed workflows and procedures to handle various incidents. This often includes steps to contain the incident, eradicating the threat, and system recovery.\n**Communication Plans:** Guidelines for internal and external communications during and after an incident, including legal and regulatory notifications if necessary.\n**Forensics and Evidence Collection:** This is an outline of procedures for evidence collection and digital forensics, which are crucial for investigating the incident and possible legal proceedings.\n**Post-Incident Analysis:** A process for reviewing and analyzing the incident and the response to improve future incident response efforts and prevent recurrences.\n**Plan Maintenance** is the ongoing updating of the plan to keep up with changes in the business environment, systems, and potential threats.\n## How To Create an Incident Response Plan?\nCreating an effective IRP requires thoroughly understanding your organization's processes, vulnerabilities, and data priorities. Here are some steps to guide you in creating your IRP:\n1. **Select an Incident Response Team. This team manages the response to security incidents. It** should be cross-functional and may include members from IT, legal, PR, and other relevant departments.\n2. **Define Roles and Responsibilities:** Each team member should know exactly what their role entails in the event of a security incident. This ensures everyone knows who is responsible for what, streamlining communications and responses.\n3. **Understand and Prioritize Assets:** Identify the data or systems most critical to your operations. Through data risk assessment, understanding what's at risk will help you strategize effectively and focus resources on protecting these assets.\n4. **Identify Potential Incidents:** Identify the types of incidents that could occur. This could range from minor incidents like an employee losing a company laptop to major incidents like a sophisticated cyberattack.\n5. **Develop Response Procedures:** Outline the actions to be taken for each type of incident. These procedures should cover detection, containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident review.\n6. **Develop a Communications Plan:** Determine how you\u2019ll communicate internally and externally during an incident. Ensure you have protocols in place for communicating with stakeholders, law enforcement, clients, and the public.\n7. **Train Your Team:** Conduct regular training sessions and drills to allow your team to practice the IRP. This will ensure that your team becomes more familiar with and efficient in executing the plan.\n8. **Plan for Post-Incident Activities:** Lessons learned after an incident should be documented and used to update the IRP. This proactive approach can help prevent similar incidents in the future or improve the response to them.\n9. **Review and Update Regularly:** IT environments and cyber threats change rapidly. Therefore, you should review and update your IRP regularly to ensure it remains effective and relevant.\n## Create a Dynamic IRP with Digital Guardian To Defend Your Threat Landscape\nAn IRP is not a one-time procedure but a living document that should be continuously updated based on evolving risks, lessons learned from past incidents, and changes to business processes or technologies.\nDigital Guardian can help you implement a well-designed and proper IRP to provide a decisive advantage in the face of a cyberattack."
  },
  {
    "Title": "NIST Incident Response: 4-Step Process and Critical Best Practices",
    "URL": "https://www.exabeam.com/explainers/incident-response/nist-incident-response-4-step-process-and-critical-best-practices/",
    "Query": "incident response procedures",
    "Content cleaned": "Yes (reduced from 14622 to 10882 chars)",
    "Content": "## What Is the NIST Incident Response Framework?\nThe NIST incident response framework, documented in the Computer Security Incident Handling Guide ( NIST Special Publication 800-61), is intended to assist organizations in planning and executing an effective incident response strategy. The framework outlines practices that help in identifying, managing, and mitigating cybersecurity incidents efficiently to minimize damage and reduce recovery time and costs.\nAdopting this framework provides a structured approach to handling security breaches and other disruptions. It breaks down incident response into clear steps, promotes readiness, and ensures a systematic process is in place, reinforcing the security infrastructure of organizations against future incidents.\n**About this Explainer:**\nThis content is part of a series about incident response.\n## Why Is NIST Providing Recommendations on Incident Response?\nNIST provides recommendations on incident response to aid organizations in establishing resilient security postures that can counteract the rising sophistication of cyber threats. The guidelines serve as an authoritative reference that firms of all sizes can adopt to fortify their defenses and ensure continuity of operations in the face of security incidents.\nBy leveraging NIST\u2019s expertise, organizations gain access to proven strategies and practices that mitigate risks associated with cybersecurity threats. This guidance is crucial in helping entities prepare for, respond to, and recover from incidents with an emphasis on minimizing impact and learning from events to bolster future responses.\n## The 4 Steps of NIST Incident Response Framework\nImage credit: NIST\n### Step 1: Incident Preparation and Prevention\nPreparation is the first step in the NIST incident response framework. Organizations must develop and implement robust policies and procedures to prevent incidents before they occur. This involves training employees, establishing security best practices, and setting up defensive mechanisms to ward off potential threats.\nPreventive measures also include regular updates and patches to systems, thorough security assessments, and proactive network monitoring. These efforts collectively create a fortified environment that discourages potential attackers and reduces the likelihood of successful breaches.\n### Step 2: Detection and Analysis\nEfficient detection and analysis are paramount in the NIST framework. Organizations must have mechanisms in place to detect incidents rapidly and analyze them to understand their nature and scope. This step involves the use of advanced monitoring tools, intrusion detection systems, and skilled cybersecurity personnel to identify anomalies that could signify a security incident.\nThe accurate analysis of the incident is crucial for determining the appropriate response strategy. It involves assessing the impact, understanding the entry point, and identifying the perpetrators, which are vital components for tailoring the response efforts effectively.\n### Step 3: Containment, Eradication, and Recovery\nOnce an incident is confirmed, containment strategies must be immediately implemented to limit its spread. This temporary fix allows organizations more time to devise a permanent solution without the risk of further damage. Subsequent to containment, eradication efforts involve removing threats from the environment, like deleting malicious files and closing unauthorized access points.\nThe recovery step focuses on restoring systems and operations to normal by repairing or replacing affected resources. This phase also involves verifying that the systems are functional and secure post-event, ensuring that no threats remain in the environment to prevent recurrence.\n### Step 4: Post-Incident Activity\nThe post-incident phase revolves around learning and evolving from the security events. This includes a thorough debriefing to discuss what happened, how it was handled, and ways to prevent similar incidents in the future. Documentation is critical during this phase to record details of the incident, response actions, and recovery process.\nOrganizations should also review and update their incident response plan regularly based on lessons learned and evolving threats. Continuous improvement in this step ensures preparedness for future incidents and strengthens organizational resilience against cyber threats.\n## Best Practices for Building Your NIST Incident Response Plan\n### Use an Incident Response Plan Template\nStarting with a template ensures that an incident response plan covers all necessary aspects as laid out in the NIST framework. Templates provide a clear structure to follow, making sure no essential element is overlooked. They also allow organizations to tailor the procedures according to specific needs without starting from scratch.\nAdopting a standard template helps maintain consistency in the response process, which can be crucial for team coordination during a crisis. Templates can be adjusted over time as the organization\u2019s needs and technologies evolve, continually optimizing the incident response strategy.\n### Use a Centralized Approach\nA centralized approach to incident management aids in maintaining a coherent response strategy across all parts of an organization. This method ensures that all team members are on the same page and that incidents are managed uniformly. Centralization facilitates quicker decision-making and more effective coordination of resources, which is vital during a crisis.\nBy centralizing incident response, organizations can also better track and analyze trends over time, leading to more insightful and actionable data. This helps in refining the incident response plan and enhances the overall security posture of the organization.\n### Utilize Security Experts\nIncorporating security experts into the incident response team is critical. Their expertise ensures that the organization\u2019s response strategy is comprehensive and up to date with the latest security practices and threat intelligence. Experts can provide in-depth insights during the creation of the incident response plan and lead effective execution during an incident.\nSecurity professionals can also offer training and support to other team members, elevating the overall skill level of the organization in handling and mitigating incidents. Their continual learning and adaptation to new threats play an essential role in keeping the organization ahead in its security efforts.\n### Put Incident Response Technology in Place\nInvesting in the right technology is crucial for an effective incident response. Tools such as automated security information and event management (SIEM) systems, advanced endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions, and other forensic tools help in quickly identifying and mitigating incidents. These technologies provide real-time analysis and alerts, facilitating immediate response.\nIntegration of incident response technologies ensures that the organization can not only respond to current incidents but also proactively anticipate and mitigate potential future threats. Continuous updates and upgrades in technology alignment with incident response strategies ensure robust defense mechanisms are always in place.\n### Build Your Own Process for Communication and Post-Event Review\nEffective communication is a cornerstone of successful incident response. Organizations should establish predefined communication protocols that outline who to contact, how to communicate during an incident, and the information dissemination hierarchy. This includes designating primary and secondary communication channels to ensure redundancy, such as emails, instant messaging, and secure phone lines. Clear communication ensures that all team members are informed about the incident\u2019s status and can coordinate their efforts efficiently.\nAfter an incident, it\u2019s crucial to conduct a performance review to evaluate how well the incident was handled and to identify areas for improvement. This review should include all stakeholders involved in the incident response to provide a comprehensive perspective. The process should focus on analyzing the effectiveness of the response steps taken, the decision-making process, and the overall time taken to resolve the incident.\n## Exabeam Platform Capabilities: SIEM, UEBA, SOAR, Insider Threats, Compliance, TDIR\nThe Exabeam Security Operations Platform applies AI and automation to security operations workflows for a holistic approach to combating cyberthreats, delivering the most effective threat detection, investigation, and response (TDIR):\n- AI-driven detections pinpoint high-risk threats by learning normal behavior of users and entities, and prioritizing threats with context-aware risk scoring.\n- Automated investigations simplify security operations, correlating disparate data to create threat timelines.\n- Playbooks document workflows and standardize activity to speed investigation and response.\n- Visualizations map coverage against the most strategic outcomes and frameworks to close data and detection gaps.\nWith these capabilities, Exabeam empowers security operations teams to achieve faster, more accurate, and consistent TDIR."
  },
  {
    "Title": "[PDF] Computer Security Incident Handling Guide",
    "URL": "https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/specialpublications/nist.sp.800-61r2.pdf",
    "Query": "incident response procedures",
    "Content cleaned": "Yes (reduced from 195226 to 191517 chars)",
    "Content": "Computer security incident response has become an important component of information technology (IT) programs. Cybersecurity-related attacks have become not only more numerous and diverse but also more damaging and disruptive. New types of security-related incidents emerge frequently. Preventive activities based on the results of risk assessments can lower the number of incidents, but not all incidents can be prevented. An incident response capability is therefore necessary for rapidly detecting incidents, minimizing loss and destruction, mitigating the weaknesses that were exploited, and restoring IT services. To that end, this publication provides guidelines for incident handling, particularly for analyzing incidentrelated data and determining the appropriate response to each incident. The guidelines can be followed independently of particular hardware platforms, operating systems, protocols, or applications.\nBecause performing incident response effectively is a complex undertaking, establishing a successful incident response capability requires substantial planning and resources. Continually monitoring for attacks is essential. Establishing clear procedures for prioritizing the handling of incidents is critical, as is implementing effective methods of collecting, analyzing, and reporting data. It is also vital to build relationships and establish suitable means of communication with other internal groups (e.g., human resources, legal) and with external groups (e.g., other incident response teams, law enforcement).\nThis publication assists organizations in establishing computer security incident response capabilities and handling incidents efficiently and effectively. This revision of the publication, Revision 2, updates material throughout the publication to reflect the changes in attacks and incidents. Understanding threats and identifying modern attacks in their early stages is key to preventing subsequent compromises, and proactively sharing information among organizations regarding the signs of these attacks is an increasingly effective way to identify them.\nImplementing the following requirements and recommendations should facilitate efficient and effective incident response for Federal departments and agencies.\nOrganizations must create, provision, and operate a formal incident response capability. Federal law requires Federal agencies to report incidents to the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) office within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).\nThe Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) requires Federal agencies to establish incident response capabilities. Each Federal civilian agency must designate a primary and secondary point of contact (POC) with US-CERT and report all incidents consistent with the agency\u2019s incident response policy. Each agency is responsible for determining how to fulfill these requirements.\nEstablishing an incident response capability should include the following actions:\nCreating an incident response policy and plan\n Developing procedures for performing incident handling and reporting\n Setting guidelines for communicating with outside parties regarding incidents\n Selecting a team structure and staffing model\n Establishing relationships and lines of communication between the incident response team and other groups, both internal (e.g., legal department) and external (e.g., law enforcement agencies)\n Determining what services the incident response team should provide\nStaffing and training the incident response team.\n# Organizations should reduce the frequency of incidents by effectively securing networks, systems, and applications.\nPreventing problems is often less costly and more effective than reacting to them after they occur. Thus, incident prevention is an important complement to an incident response capability. If security controls are insufficient, high volumes of incidents may occur. This could overwhelm the resources and capacity for response, which would result in delayed or incomplete recovery and possibly more extensive damage and longer periods of service and data unavailability. Incident handling can be performed more effectively if organizations complement their incident response capability with adequate resources to actively maintain the security of networks, systems, and applications. This includes training IT staff on complying with the organization\u2019s security standards and making users aware of policies and procedures regarding appropriate use of networks, systems, and applications.\n# Organizations should document their guidelines for interactions with other organizations regarding incidents.\nDuring incident handling, the organization will need to communicate with outside parties, such as other incident response teams, law enforcement, the media, vendors, and victim organizations. Because these communications often need to occur quickly, organizations should predetermine communication guidelines so that only the appropriate information is shared with the right parties.\n# Organizations should be generally prepared to handle any incident but should focus on being prepared to handle incidents that use common attack vectors.\nIncidents can occur in countless ways, so it is infeasible to develop step-by-step instructions for handling every incident. This publication defines several types of incidents, based on common attack vectors; these categories are not intended to provide definitive classification for incidents, but rather to be used as a basis for defining more specific handling procedures. Different types of incidents merit different response strategies. The attack vectors are:\n External/Removable Media: An attack executed from removable media (e.g., flash drive, CD) or peripheral device.\n Attrition: An attack that employs brute force methods to compromise, degrade, or destroy systems, networks, or services.\n Web: An attack executed from a website or web-based application. Email: An attack executed via an email message or attachment.\n Improper Usage: Any incident resulting from violation of an organization\u2019s acceptable usage policies by an authorized user, excluding the above categories.\n Loss or Theft of Equipment: The loss or theft of a computing device or media used by the organization, such as a laptop or smartphone.\n Other: An attack that does not fit into any of the other categories.\n# Organizations should emphasize the importance of incident detection and analysis throughout the organization.\nIn an organization, millions of possible signs of incidents may occur each day, recorded mainly by logging and computer security software. Automation is needed to perform an initial analysis of the data and select events of interest for human review. Event correlation software can be of great value in automating the analysis process. However, the effectiveness of the process depends on the quality of the data that goes into it. Organizations should establish logging standards and procedures to ensure that adequate information is collected by logs and security software and that the data is reviewed regularly.\n# Organizations should create written guidelines for prioritizing incidents.\nPrioritizing the handling of individual incidents is a critical decision point in the incident response process. Effective information sharing can help an organization identify situations that are of greater severity and demand immediate attention. Incidents should be prioritized based on the relevant factors, such as the functional impact of the incident (e.g., current and likely future negative impact to business functions), the information impact of the incident (e.g., effect on the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the organization\u2019s information), and the recoverability from the incident (e.g., the time and types of resources that must be spent on recovering from the incident).\n# Organizations should use the lessons learned process to gain value from incidents.\nAfter a major incident has been handled, the organization should hold a lessons learned meeting to review the effectiveness of the incident handling process and identify necessary improvements to existing security controls and practices. Lessons learned meetings can also be held periodically for lesser incidents as time and resources permit. The information accumulated from all lessons learned meetings should be used to identify and correct systemic weaknesses and deficiencies in policies and procedures. Follow-up reports generated for each resolved incident can be important not only for evidentiary purposes but also for reference in handling future incidents and in training new team members.\n# 1.1 Authority\nThe National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) developed this document in furtherance of its statutory responsibilities under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) of 2002, Public Law 107-347.\nNIST is responsible for developing standards and guidelines, including minimum requirements, for providing adequate information security for all agency operations and assets, but such standards and guidelines shall not apply to national security systems. This guideline is consistent with the requirements of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-130, Section 8b(3), \u201cSecuring Agency Information Systems,\u201d as analyzed in A-130, Appendix IV: Analysis of Key Sections. Supplemental information is provided in A-130, Appendix III.\nThis guideline has been prepared for use by Federal agencies. It may be used by nongovernmental organizations on a voluntary basis and is not subject to copyright, though attribution is desired.\nNothing in this document should be taken to contradict standards and guidelines made mandatory and binding on Federal agencies by the Secretary of Commerce under statutory authority, nor should these guidelines be interpreted as altering or superseding the existing authorities of the Secretary of Commerce, Director of the OMB, or any other Federal official.\n# 1.2 Purpose and Scope\nThis publication seeks to assist organizations in mitigating the risks from computer security incidents by providing practical guidelines on responding to incidents effectively and efficiently. It includes guidelines on establishing an effective incident response program, but the primary focus of the document is detecting, analyzing, prioritizing, and handling incidents. Organizations are encouraged to tailor the recommended guidelines and solutions to meet their specific security and mission requirements.\n# 1.3 Audience\nThis document has been created for computer security incident response teams (CSIRTs), system and network administrators, security staff, technical support staff, chief information security officers (CISOs), chief information officers (CIOs), computer security program managers, and others who are responsible for preparing for, or responding to, security incidents.\n# 1.4 Document Structure\nThe remainder of this document is organized into the following sections and appendices:\n Section 2 discusses the need for incident response, outlines possible incident response team structures, and highlights other groups within an organization that may participate in incident handling.\n Section 3 reviews the basic incident handling steps and provides advice for performing incident handling more effectively, particularly incident detection and analysis.\n Section 4 examines the need for incident response coordination and information sharing. Appendix A contains incident response scenarios and questions for use in incident response tabletop discussions.\n Appendix B provides lists of suggested data fields to collect for each incident.\n Appendices C and D contain a glossary and acronym list, respectively.\n Appendix E identifies resources that may be useful in planning and performing incident response.\n Appendix F covers frequently asked questions about incident response.\n Appendix G lists the major steps to follow when handling a computer security incident-related crisis. Appendix H contains a change log listing significant changes since the previous revision.\n# 2\\. Organizing a Computer Security Incident Response Capability\nOrganizing an effective computer security incident response capability (CSIRC) involves several major decisions and actions. One of the first considerations should be to create an organization-specific definition of the term \u201cincident\u201d so that the scope of the term is clear. The organization should decide what services the incident response team should provide, consider which team structures and models can provide those services, and select and implement one or more incident response teams. Incident response plan, policy, and procedure creation is an important part of establishing a team, so that incident response is performed effectively, efficiently, and consistently, and so that the team is empowered to do what needs to be done. The plan, policies, and procedures should reflect the team\u2019s interactions with other teams within the organization as well as with outside parties, such as law enforcement, the media, and other incident response organizations. This section provides not only guidelines that should be helpful to organizations that are establishing incident response capabilities, but also advice on maintaining and enhancing existing capabilities.\n# 2.1 Events and Incidents\nAn event is any observable occurrence in a system or network. Events include a user connecting to a file share, a server receiving a request for a web page, a user sending email, and a firewall blocking a connection attempt. Adverse events are events with a negative consequence, such as system crashes, packet floods, unauthorized use of system privileges, unauthorized access to sensitive data, and execution of malware that destroys data. This guide addresses only adverse events that are computer securityrelated, not those caused by natural disasters, power failures, etc.\nA computer security incident is a violation or imminent threat of violation1 of computer security policies, acceptable use policies, or standard security practices. Examples of incidents are:\n An attacker commands a botnet to send high volumes of connection requests to a web server, causing it to crash.\n Users are tricked into opening a \u201cquarterly report\u201d sent via email that is actually malware; running the tool has infected their computers and established connections with an external host.\n An attacker obtains sensitive data and threatens that the details will be released publicly if the organization does not pay a designated sum of money.\n A user provides or exposes sensitive information to others through peer-to-peer file sharing services.\n# 2.2 Need for Incident Response\nAttacks frequently compromise personal and business data, and it is critical to respond quickly and effectively when security breaches occur. The concept of computer security incident response has become widely accepted and implemented. One of the benefits of having an incident response capability is that it supports responding to incidents systematically (i.e., following a consistent incident handling methodology) so that the appropriate actions are taken. Incident response helps personnel to minimize loss or theft of information and disruption of services caused by incidents. Another benefit of incident response is the ability to use information gained during incident handling to better prepare for handling future incidents and to provide stronger protection for systems and data. An incident response capability also helps with dealing properly with legal issues that may arise during incidents.\nBesides the business reasons to establish an incident response capability, Federal departments and agencies must comply with law, regulations, and policy directing a coordinated, effective defense against information security threats. Chief among these are the following:\n OMB\u2019s Circular No. A-130, Appendix III,3 released in 2000, which directs Federal agencies to \u201censure that there is a capability to provide help to users when a security incident occurs in the system and to share information concerning common vulnerabilities and threats. This capability shall share information with other organizations \u2026 and should assist the agency in pursuing appropriate legal action, consistent with Department of Justice guidance.\u201d\n FISMA (from 2002),4 which requires agencies to have \u201cprocedures for detecting, reporting, and responding to security incidents\u201d and establishes a centralized Federal information security incident center, in part to:\n\u201cProvide timely technical assistance to operators of agency information systems \u2026 including\nguidance on detecting and handling information security incidents \u2026\nCompile and analyze information about incidents that threaten information security \u2026\nInform operators of agency information systems about current and potential information security\nthreats, and vulnerabilities \u2026 .\u201d\nFederal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 200, Minimum Security Requirements for Federal Information and Information Systems , March 2006, which specifies minimum security requirements for Federal information and information systems, including incident response. The specific requirements are defined in NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-53, Recommended Security Controls for Federal Information Systems and Organizations.\n OMB Memorandum M-07-16, Safeguarding Against and Responding to the Breach of Personally Identifiable Information , May 2007, which provides guidance on reporting security incidents that involve PII.\n# 2.3 Incident Response Policy, Plan, and Procedure Creation\nThis section discusses policies, plans, and procedures related to incident response, with an emphasis on interactions with outside parties.\n# 2.3.1 Policy Elements\nPolicy governing incident response is highly individualized to the organization. However, most policies include the same key elements:\nStatement of management commitment Purpose and objectives of the policy\n Scope of the policy (to whom and what it applies and under what circumstances)\n Definition of computer security incidents and related terms\n Organizational structure and definition of roles, responsibilities, and levels of authority; should include the authority of the incident response team to confiscate or disconnect equipment and to monitor suspicious activity, the requirements for reporting certain types of incidents, the requirements and guidelines for external communications and information sharing (e.g., what can be shared with whom, when, and over what channels), and the handoff and escalation points in the incident management process\n Prioritization or severity ratings of incidents\n Performance measures (as discussed in Section 3.4.2)\n Reporting and contact forms.\n# 2.3.2 Plan Elements\nOrganizations should have a formal, focused, and coordinated approach to responding to incidents, including an incident response plan that provides the roadmap for implementing the incident response capability. Each organization needs a plan that meets its unique requirements, which relates to the organization\u2019s mission, size, structure, and functions. The plan should lay out the necessary resources and management support. The incident response plan should include the following elements:\n Mission\n Strategies and goals\n Senior management approval\n Organizational approach to incident response\n How the incident response team will communicate with the rest of the organization and with other organizations\n Metrics for measuring the incident response capability and its effectiveness\n Roadmap for maturing the incident response capability\n How the program fits into the overall organization.\nThe organization\u2019s mission, strategies, and goals for incident response should help in determining the structure of its incident response capability. The incident response program structure should also be discussed within the plan. Section 2.4.1 discusses the types of structures.\nOnce an organization develops a plan and gains management approval, the organization should implement the plan and review it at least annually to ensure the organization is following the roadmap for maturing the capability and fulfilling their goals for incident response.\n# 2.3.3 Procedure Elements\nProcedures should be based on the incident response policy and plan. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are a delineation of the specific technical processes, techniques, checklists, and forms used by the incident response team. SOPs should be reasonably comprehensive and detailed to ensure that the\npriorities of the organization are reflected in response operations. In addition, following standardized responses should minimize errors, particularly those that might be caused by stressful incident handling situations. SOPs should be tested to validate their accuracy and usefulness, then distributed to all team members. Training should be provided for SOP users; the SOP documents can be used as an instructional tool. Suggested SOP elements are presented throughout Section 3.\n# 2.3.4 Sharing Information With Outside Parties\nOrganizations often need to communicate with outside parties regarding an incident, and they should do so whenever appropriate, such as contacting law enforcement, fielding media inquiries, and seeking external expertise. Another example is discussing incidents with other involved parties, such as Internet service providers (ISPs), the vendor of vulnerable software, or other incident response teams. Organizations may also proactively share relevant incident indicator information with peers to improve detection and analysis of incidents. The incident response team should discuss information sharing with the organization\u2019s public affairs office, legal department, and management before an incident occurs to establish policies and procedures regarding information sharing. Otherwise, sensitive information regarding incidents may be provided to unauthorized parties, potentially leading to additional disruption and financial loss. The team should document all contacts and communications with outside parties for liability and evidentiary purposes.\nThe following sections provide guidelines on communicating with several types of outside parties, as depicted in  The double-headed arrows indicate that either party may initiate communications. See Section 4 for additional information on communicating with outside parties, and see Section 2.4 for a discussion of communications involving incident response outsourcers.\n Communications with Outside Parties\n# 2.3.4.1 The Media\nThe incident handling team should establish media communications procedures that comply with the organization\u2019s policies on media interaction and information disclosure. For discussing incidents with the media, organizations often find it beneficial to designate a single point of contact (POC) and at least one backup contact. The following actions are recommended for preparing these designated contacts and should also be considered for preparing others who may be communicating with the media:\n Conduct training sessions on interacting with the media regarding incidents, which should include the importance of not revealing sensitive information, such as technical details of countermeasures that could assist other attackers, and the positive aspects of communicating important information to the public fully and effectively.\n Establish procedures to brief media contacts on the issues and sensitivities regarding a particular incident before discussing it with the media.\n Maintain a statement of the current status of the incident so that communications with the media are consistent and up-to-date.\n Remind all staff of the general procedures for handling media inquiries. Hold mock interviews and press conferences during incident handling exercises. The following are examples of questions to ask the media contact: Who attacked you? Why? \u4e00 When did it happen? How did it happen? Did this happen because you have poor security practices? How widespread is this incident? What steps are you taking to determine what happened and to prevent future occurrences? What is the impact of this incident? Was any personally identifiable information (PII) exposed? What is the estimated cost of this incident?\n# 2.3.4.2 Law Enforcement\nOne reason that many security-related incidents do not result in convictions is that some organizations do not properly contact law enforcement. Several levels of law enforcement are available to investigate incidents: for example, within the United States, Federal investigatory agencies (e.g., the Federal Bureau of Investigation \\[FBI\\] and the U.S. Secret Service), district attorney offices, state law enforcement, and local (e.g., county) law enforcement. Law enforcement agencies in other countries may also be involved, such as for attacks launched from or directed at locations outside the US. In addition, agencies have an Office of Inspector General (OIG) for investigation of violation of the law within each agency. The incident response team should become acquainted with its various law enforcement representatives before an incident occurs to discuss conditions under which incidents should be reported to them, how the reporting should be performed, what evidence should be collected, and how it should be collected.\nLaw enforcement should be contacted through designated individuals in a manner consistent with the requirements of the law and the organization\u2019s procedures. Many organizations prefer to appoint one incident response team member as the primary POC with law enforcement. This person should be familiar with the reporting procedures for all relevant law enforcement agencies and well prepared to recommend which agency, if any, should be contacted. Note that the organization typically should not contact multiple agencies because doing so might result in jurisdictional conflicts. The incident response team should understand what the potential jurisdictional issues are (e.g., physical location\u2014an organization based in one state has a server located in a second state attacked from a system in a third state, being used remotely by an attacker in a fourth state).\n# 2.3.4.3 Incident Reporting Organizations\nFISMA requires Federal agencies to report incidents to the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), which is a governmentwide incident response organization that assists Federal civilian agencies in their incident handling efforts. US-CERT does not replace existing agency response teams; rather, it augments the efforts of Federal civilian agencies by serving as a focal point for dealing with incidents. US-CERT analyzes the agency-provided information to identify trends and indicators of attacks; these are easier to discern when reviewing data from many organizations than when reviewing the data of a single organization.\nEach agency must designate a primary and secondary POC with US-CERT and report all incidents consistent with the agency\u2019s incident response policy. Organizations should create a policy that states who is designated to report incidents and how the incidents should be reported. Requirements, categories, and timeframes for reporting incidents to US-CERT are on the US-CERT website. All Federal agencies must ensure that their incident response procedures adhere to US-CERT\u2019s reporting requirements and that the procedures are followed properly.\nAll organizations are encouraged to report incidents to their appropriate CSIRTs. If an organization does not have its own CSIRT to contact, it can report incidents to other organizations, including Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs). One of the functions of these industry-specific private sector groups is to share important computer security-related information among their members. Several ISACs have been formed for industry sectors such as Communications, Electric Sector, Financial Services, Information Technology, and Research and Education.10\n# 2.3.4.4 Other Outside Parties\nAn organization may want to discuss incidents with other groups, including those listed below. When reaching out to these external parties, an organization may want to work through US-CERT or its ISAC, as a \u201ctrusted introducer\u201d to broker the relationship. It is likely that others are experiencing similar issues, and the trusted introducer can ensure that any such patterns are identified and taken into consideration.\nOrganization\u2019s ISP. An organization may need assistance from its ISP in blocking a major networkbased attack or tracing its origin.\n Owners of Attacking Addresses. If attacks are originating from an external organization\u2019s IP address space, incident handlers may want to talk to the designated security contacts for the organization to alert them to the activity or to ask them to collect evidence. It is highly recommended to coordinate such communications with US-CERT or an ISAC.\n Software Vendors. Incident handlers may want to speak to a software vendor about suspicious activity. This contact could include questions regarding the significance of certain log entries or known false positives for certain intrusion detection signatures, where minimal information regarding the incident may need to be revealed. More information may need to be provided in some cases\u2014for example, if a server appears to have been compromised through an unknown software vulnerability. Software vendors may also provide information on known threats (e.g., new attacks) to help organizations understand the current threat environment.\n Other Incident Response Teams. An organization may experience an incident that is similar to ones handled by other teams; proactively sharing information can facilitate more effective and efficient incident handling (e.g., providing advance warning, increasing preparedness, developing situational awareness). Groups such as the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) , the Government Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (GFIRST) , and the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG)13 are not incident response teams, but they promote information sharing among incident response teams.\n Affected External Parties. An incident may affect external parties directly\u2014for example, an outside organization may contact the organization and claim that one of the organization\u2019s users is attacking it. Another way in which external parties may be affected is if an attacker gains access to sensitive information regarding them, such as credit card information. In some jurisdictions, organizations are required to notify all parties that are affected by such an incident. Regardless of the circumstances, it is preferable for the organization to notify affected external parties of an incident before the media or other external organizations do so. Handlers should be careful to give out only appropriate information\u2014the affected parties may request details about internal investigations that should not be revealed publicly.\nOMB Memorandum M-07-16, Safeguarding Against and Responding to the Breach of Personally Identifiable Information, requires Federal agencies to develop and implement a breach notification policy for personally identifiable information (PII).14 Incident handlers should understand how their incident handling actions should differ when a PII breach is suspected to have occurred, such as notifying additional parties or notifying parties within a shorter timeframe. Specific recommendations for PII breach notification policies are presented in OMB Memorandum M-07-16. Also, the National Conference of State Legislatures has a list of state security breach notification laws.15\n# 2.4 Incident Response Team Structure\nAn incident response team should be available for anyone who discovers or suspects that an incident involving the organization has occurred. One or more team members, depending on the magnitude of the incident and availability of personnel, will then handle the incident. The incident handlers analyze the incident data, determine the impact of the incident, and act appropriately to limit the damage and restore normal services. The incident response team\u2019s success depends on the participation and cooperation of individuals throughout the organization. This section identifies such individuals, discusses incident response team models, and provides advice on selecting an appropriate model.\n# 2.4.1 Team Models\nPossible structures for an incident response team include the following:\n Central Incident Response Team. A single incident response team handles incidents throughout the organization. This model is effective for small organizations and for organizations with minimal geographic diversity in terms of computing resources.\n Distributed Incident Response Teams. The organization has multiple incident response teams, each responsible for a particular logical or physical segment of the organization. This model is effective for large organizations (e.g., one team per division) and for organizations with major computing resources at distant locations (e.g., one team per geographic region, one team per major facility). However, the teams should be part of a single coordinated entity so that the incident response process is consistent across the organization and information is shared among teams. This is particularly important because multiple teams may see components of the same incident or may handle similar incidents.\n Coordinating Team. An incident response team provides advice to other teams without having authority over those teams\u2014for example, a departmentwide team may assist individual agencies\u2019 teams. This model can be thought of as a CSIRT for CSIRTs. Because the focus of this document is central and distributed CSIRTs, the coordinating team model is not addressed in detail in this document.16\nIncident response teams can also use any of three staffing models:\n Employees. The organization performs all of its incident response work, with limited technical and administrative support from contractors.\n Partially Outsourced. The organization outsources portions of its incident response work. Section 2.4.2 discusses the major factors that should be considered with outsourcing. Although incident response duties can be divided among the organization and one or more outsourcers in many ways, a few arrangements have become commonplace:\nThe most prevalent arrangement is for the organization to outsource 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-aweek (24/7) monitoring of intrusion detection sensors, firewalls, and other security devices to an offsite managed security services provider (MSSP). The MSSP identifies and analyzes suspicious activity and reports each detected incident to the organization\u2019s incident response team. Some organizations perform basic incident response work in-house and call on contractors to assist with handling incidents, particularly those that are more serious or widespread.\n Fully Outsourced. The organization completely outsources its incident response work, typically to an onsite contractor. This model is most likely to be used when the organization needs a full-time, onsite incident response team but does not have enough available, qualified employees. It is assumed that the organization will have employees supervising and overseeing the outsourcer\u2019s work.\n# 2.4.2 Team Model Selection\nWhen selecting appropriate structure and staffing models for an incident response team, organizations should consider the following factors:\n The Need for 24/7 Availability. Most organizations need incident response staff to be available 24/7. This typically means that incident handlers can be contacted by phone, but it can also mean that an onsite presence is required. Real-time availability is the best for incident response because the longer an incident lasts, the more potential there is for damage and loss. Real-time contact is often needed when working with other organizations\u2014for example, tracing an attack back to its source.\n Full-Time Versus Part-Time Team Members. Organizations with limited funding, staffing, or incident response needs may have only part-time incident response team members, serving as more of a virtual incident response team. In this case, the incident response team can be thought of as a volunteer fire department. When an emergency occurs, the team members are contacted rapidly, and those who can assist do so. An existing group such as the IT help desk can act as a first POC for incident reporting. The help desk members can be trained to perform the initial investigation and data gathering and then alert the incident response team if it appears that a serious incident has occurred.\n Employee Morale. Incident response work is very stressful, as are the on-call responsibilities of most team members. This combination makes it easy for incident response team members to become overly stressed. Many organizations will also struggle to find willing, available, experienced, and properly skilled people to participate, particularly in 24-hour support. Segregating roles, particularly reducing the amount of administrative work that team members are responsible for performing, can be a significant boost to morale.\n Cost. Cost is a major factor, especially if employees are required to be onsite 24/7. Organizations may fail to include incident response-specific costs in budgets, such as sufficient funding for training and maintaining skills. Because the incident response team works with so many facets of IT, its members need much broader knowledge than most IT staff members. They must also understand how to use the tools of incident response, such as digital forensics software. Other costs that may be overlooked are physical security for the team\u2019s work areas and communications mechanisms.\n Staff Expertise. Incident handling requires specialized knowledge and experience in several technical areas; the breadth and depth of knowledge required varies based on the severity of the organization\u2019s risks. Outsourcers may possess deeper knowledge of intrusion detection, forensics, vulnerabilities, exploits, and other aspects of security than employees of the organization. Also, MSSPs may be able to correlate events among customers so that they can identify new threats more quickly than any individual customer could. However, technical staff members within the organization usually have much better knowledge of the organization\u2019s environment than an outsourcer would, which can be beneficial in identifying false positives associated with organizationspecific behavior and the criticality of targets. Section 2.4.3 contains additional information on recommended team member skills.\nWhen considering outsourcing, organizations should keep these issues in mind:\nCurrent and Future Quality of Work. Organizations should consider not only the current quality (breadth and depth) of the outsourcer\u2019s work, but also efforts to ensure the quality of future work\u2014 for example, minimizing turnover and burnout and providing a solid training program for new employees. Organizations should think about how they could objectively assess the quality of the outsourcer\u2019s work.\n Division of Responsibilities. Organizations are often unwilling to give an outsourcer authority to make operational decisions for the environment (e.g., disconnecting a web server). It is important to document the appropriate actions for these decision points. For example, one partially outsourced model addresses this issue by having the outsourcer provide incident data to the organization\u2019s internal team, along with recommendations for further handling the incident. The internal team ultimately makes the operational decisions, with the outsourcer continuing to provide support as needed.\n Sensitive Information Revealed to the Contractor. Dividing incident response responsibilities and restricting access to sensitive information can limit this. For example, a contractor may determine what user ID was used in an incident (e.g., ID 123456) but not know what person is associated with the user ID. Employees can then take over the investigation. Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are one possible option for protecting the disclosure of sensitive information.\n Lack of Organization-Specific Knowledge. Accurate analysis and prioritization of incidents are dependent on specific knowledge of the organization\u2019s environment. The organization should provide the outsourcer regularly updated documents that define what incidents it is concerned about, which resources are critical, and what the level of response should be under various sets of circumstances. The organization should also report all changes and updates made to its IT infrastructure, network configuration, and systems. Otherwise, the contractor has to make a best guess as to how each incident should be handled, inevitably leading to mishandled incidents and frustration on both sides. Lack of organization-specific knowledge can also be a problem when incident response is not outsourced if communications are weak among teams or if the organization simply does not collect the necessary information.\n Lack of Correlation. Correlation among multiple data sources is very important. If the intrusion detection system records an attempted attack against a web server, but the outsourcer has no access to the server\u2019s logs, it may be unable to determine whether the attack was successful. To be efficient, the outsourcer will require administrative privileges to critical systems and security device logs remotely over a secure channel. This will increase administration costs, introduce additional access entry points, and increase the risk of unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information.\nHandling Incidents at Multiple Locations. Effective incident response work often requires a physical presence at the organization\u2019s facilities. If the outsourcer is offsite, consider where the outsourcer is located, how quickly it can have an incident response team at any facility, and how much this will cost. Consider onsite visits; perhaps there are certain facilities or areas where the outsourcer should not be permitted to work.\n Maintaining Incident Response Skills In-House. Organizations that completely outsource incident response should strive to maintain basic incident response skills in-house. Situations may arise in which the outsourcer is unavailable, so the organization should be prepared to perform its own incident handling. The organization\u2019s technical staff must also be able to understand the significance, technical implications, and impact of the outsourcer\u2019s recommendations.\n# 2.4.3 Incident Response Personnel\nA single employee, with one or more designated alternates, should be in charge of incident response. In a fully outsourced model, this person oversees and evaluates the outsourcer\u2019s work. All other models generally have a team manager and one or more deputies who assumes authority in the absence of the team manager. The managers typically perform a variety of tasks, including acting as a liaison with upper management and other teams and organizations, defusing crisis situations, and ensuring that the team has the necessary personnel, resources, and skills. Managers should be technically adept and have excellent communication skills, particularly an ability to communicate to a range of audiences. Managers are ultimately responsible for ensuring that incident response activities are performed properly.\nIn addition to the team manager and deputy, some teams also have a technical lead\u2014a person with strong technical skills and incident response experience who assumes oversight of and final responsibility for the quality of the team\u2019s technical work. The position of technical lead should not be confused with the position of incident lead. Larger teams often assign an incident lead as the primary POC for handling a specific incident; the incident lead is held accountable for the incident\u2019s handling. Depending on the size of the incident response team and the magnitude of the incident, the incident lead may not actually perform any actual incident handling, but rather coordinate the handlers\u2019 activities, gather information from the handlers, provide incident updates to other groups, and ensure that the team\u2019s needs are met.\nMembers of the incident response team should have excellent technical skills, such as system administration, network administration, programming, technical support, or intrusion detection. Every team member should have good problem solving skills and critical thinking abilities. It is not necessary for every team member to be a technical expert\u2014to a large degree, practical and funding considerations will dictate this\u2014but having at least one highly proficient person in each major area of technology (e.g., commonly attacked operating systems and applications) is a necessity. It may also be helpful to have some team members specialize in particular technical areas, such as network intrusion detection, malware analysis, or forensics. It is also often helpful to temporarily bring in technical specialists that aren\u2019t normally part of the team.\nIt is important to counteract staff burnout by providing opportunities for learning and growth. Suggestions for building and maintaining skills are as follows:\nBudget enough funding to maintain, enhance, and expand proficiency in technical areas and security disciplines, as well as less technical topics such as the legal aspects of incident response. This should include sending staff to conferences and encouraging or otherwise incentivizing participation in conferences, ensuring the availability of technical references that promote deeper technical understanding, and occasionally bringing in outside experts (e.g., contractors) with deep technical knowledge in needed areas as funding permits.\n Give team members opportunities to perform other tasks, such as creating educational materials, conducting security awareness workshops, and performing research.\n Consider rotating staff members in and out of the incident response team, and participate in exchanges in which team members temporarily trade places with others (e.g., network administrators) to gain new technical skills.\n Maintain sufficient staffing so that team members can have uninterrupted time off work (e.g., vacations). Create a mentoring program to enable senior technical staff to help less experienced staff learn incident handling.\n Develop incident handling scenarios and have the team members discuss how they would handle them. Appendix A contains a set of scenarios and a list of questions to be used during scenario discussions.\nIncident response team members should have other skills in addition to technical expertise. Teamwork skills are of fundamental importance because cooperation and coordination are necessary for successful incident response. Every team member should also have good communication skills. Speaking skills are important because the team will interact with a wide variety of people, and writing skills are important when team members are preparing advisories and procedures. Although not everyone within a team needs to have strong writing and speaking skills, at least a few people within every team should possess them so the team can represent itself well in front of others.\n# 2.4.4 Dependencies within Organizations\nIt is important to identify other groups within the organization that may need to participate in incident handling so that their cooperation can be solicited before it is needed. Every incident response team relies on the expertise, judgment, and abilities of others, including:\n Management. Management establishes incident response policy, budget, and staffing. Ultimately, management is held responsible for coordinating incident response among various stakeholders, minimizing damage, and reporting to Congress, OMB, the General Accounting Office (GAO), and other parties.\n Information Assurance. Information security staff members may be needed during certain stages of incident handling (prevention, containment, eradication, and recovery)\u2014for example, to alter network security controls (e.g., firewall rulesets).\n IT Support. IT technical experts (e.g., system and network administrators) not only have the needed skills to assist but also usually have the best understanding of the technology they manage on a daily basis. This understanding can ensure that the appropriate actions are taken for the affected system, such as whether to disconnect an attacked system.\n Legal Department. Legal experts should review incident response plans, policies, and procedures to ensure their compliance with law and Federal guidance, including the right to privacy. In addition, the guidance of the general counsel or legal department should be sought if there is reason to believe that an incident may have legal ramifications, including evidence collection, prosecution of a suspect, or a lawsuit, or if there may be a need for a memorandum of understanding (MOU) or other binding agreements involving liability limitations for information sharing.\n Public Affairs and Media Relations. Depending on the nature and impact of an incident, a need may exist to inform the media and, by extension, the public.\n Human Resources. If an employee is suspected of causing an incident, the human resources department may be involved\u2014for example, in assisting with disciplinary proceedings.\n Business Continuity Planning. Organizations should ensure that incident response policies and procedures and business continuity processes are in sync. Computer security incidents undermine the business resilience of an organization. Business continuity planning professionals should be made aware of incidents and their impacts so they can fine-tune business impact assessments, risk assessments, and continuity of operations plans. Further, because business continuity planners have extensive expertise in minimizing operational disruption during severe circumstances, they may be valuable in planning responses to certain situations, such as denial of service (DoS) conditions.\n Physical Security and Facilities Management. Some computer security incidents occur through breaches of physical security or involve coordinated logical and physical attacks. The incident response team also may need access to facilities during incident handling\u2014for example, to acquire a compromised workstation from a locked office.\n# 2.5 Incident Response Team Services\nThe main focus of an incident response team is performing incident response, but it is fairly rare for a team to perform incident response only. The following are examples of other services a team might offer:\n Intrusion Detection. The first tier of an incident response team often assumes responsibility for intrusion detection. The team generally benefits because it should be poised to analyze incidents more quickly and accurately, based on the knowledge it gains of intrusion detection technologies.\n Advisory Distribution. A team may issue advisories within the organization regarding new vulnerabilities and threats.18 Automated methods should be used whenever appropriate to disseminate information; for example, the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) provides information via XML and RSS feeds when new vulnerabilities are added to it. Advisories are often most necessary when new threats are emerging, such as a high-profile social or political event (e.g., celebrity wedding) that attackers are likely to leverage in their social engineering. Only one group within the organization should distribute computer security advisories to avoid duplicated effort and conflicting information.\n Education and Awareness. Education and awareness are resource multipliers\u2014the more the users and technical staff know about detecting, reporting, and responding to incidents, the less drain there should be on the incident response team. This information can be communicated through many means: workshops, websites, newsletters, posters, and even stickers on monitors and laptops.\n Information Sharing. Incident response teams often participate in information sharing groups, such as ISACs or regional partnerships. Accordingly, incident response teams often manage the organization\u2019s incident information sharing efforts, such as aggregating information related to incidents and effectively sharing that information with other organizations, as well as ensuring that pertinent information is shared within the enterprise.\n# 2.6 Recommendations\nThe key recommendations presented in this section for organizing a computer security incident handling\ncapability are summarized below.\n Establish a formal incident response capability. Organizations should be prepared to respond quickly and effectively when computer security defenses are breached. FISMA requires Federal agencies to establish incident response capabilities.\n Create an incident response policy. The incident response policy is the foundation of the incident response program. It defines which events are considered incidents, establishes the organizational structure for incident response, defines roles and responsibilities, and lists the requirements for reporting incidents, among other items.\n Develop an incident response plan based on the incident response policy. The incident response plan provides a roadmap for implementing an incident response program based on the organization\u2019s policy. The plan indicates both short- and long-term goals for the program, including metrics for measuring the program. The incident response plan should also indicate how often incident handlers should be trained and the requirements for incident handlers.\n Develop incident response procedures. The incident response procedures provide detailed steps for responding to an incident. The procedures should cover all the phases of the incident response process. The procedures should be based on the incident response policy and plan.\n Establish policies and procedures regarding incident-related information sharing. The organization should communicate appropriate incident details with outside parties, such as the media, law enforcement agencies, and incident reporting organizations. The incident response team should discuss this with the organization\u2019s public affairs office, legal department, and management to establish policies and procedures regarding information sharing. The team should comply with existing organization policy on interacting with the media and other outside parties.\n Provide pertinent information on incidents to the appropriate organization. Federal civilian agencies are required to report incidents to US-CERT; other organizations can contact US-CERT and/or their ISAC. Reporting is beneficial because US-CERT and the ISACs use the reported data to provide information to the reporting parties regarding new threats and incident trends.\n Consider the relevant factors when selecting an incident response team model. Organizations should carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each possible team structure model and staffing model in the context of the organization\u2019s needs and available resources.\n Select people with appropriate skills for the incident response team. The credibility and proficiency of the team depend to a large extent on the technical skills and critical thinking abilities of its members. Critical technical skills include system administration, network administration, programming, technical support, and intrusion detection. Teamwork and communications skills are\nalso needed for effective incident handling. Necessary training should be provided to all team members.\n Identify other groups within the organization that may need to participate in incident handling. Every incident response team relies on the expertise, judgment, and abilities of other teams, including management, information assurance, IT support, legal, public affairs, and facilities management.\n Determine which services the team should offer. Although the main focus of the team is incident response, most teams perform additional functions. Examples include monitoring intrusion detection sensors, distributing security advisories, and educating users on security.\nThe incident response process has several phases. The initial phase involves establishing and training an incident response team, and acquiring the necessary tools and resources. During preparation, the organization also attempts to limit the number of incidents that will occur by selecting and implementing a set of controls based on the results of risk assessments. However, residual risk will inevitably persist after controls are implemented. Detection of security breaches is thus necessary to alert the organization whenever incidents occur. In keeping with the severity of the incident, the organization can mitigate the impact of the incident by containing it and ultimately recovering from it. During this phase, activity often cycles back to detection and analysis\u2014for example, to see if additional hosts are infected by malware while eradicating a malware incident. After the incident is adequately handled, the organization issues a report that details the cause and cost of the incident and the steps the organization should take to prevent future incidents. This section describes the major phases of the incident response process\u2014preparation, detection and analysis, containment, eradication and recovery, and post-incident activity\u2014in detail. illustrates the incident response life cycle.\n Incident Response Life Cycle\n# 3.1 Preparation\nIncident response methodologies typically emphasize preparation\u2014not only establishing an incident response capability so that the organization is ready to respond to incidents, but also preventing incidents by ensuring that systems, networks, and applications are sufficiently secure. Although the incident response team is not typically responsible for incident prevention, it is fundamental to the success of incident response programs. This section provides basic advice on preparing to handle incidents and on preventing incidents.\n# 3.1.1 Preparing to Handle Incidents\nThe lists below provide examples of tools and resources available that may be of value during incident handling. These lists are intended to be a starting point for discussions about which tools and resources an organization\u2019s incident handlers need. For example, smartphones are one way to have resilient emergency communication and coordination mechanisms. An organization should have multiple (separate and different) communication and coordination mechanisms in case of failure of one mechanism.\nIncident Handler Communications and Facilities:\n Contact information for team members and others within and outside the organization (primary and backup contacts), such as law enforcement and other incident response teams; information may include phone numbers, email addresses, public encryption keys (in accordance with the encryption software described below), and instructions for verifying the contact\u2019s identity\n On-call information for other teams within the organization, including escalation information  Incident reporting mechanisms, such as phone numbers, email addresses, online forms, and secure instant messaging systems that users can use to report suspected incidents; at least one mechanism should permit people to report incidents anonymously\nIssue tracking system for tracking incident information, status, etc.\n Smartphones to be carried by team members for off-hour support and onsite communications  Encryption software to be used for communications among team members, within the organization and with external parties; for Federal agencies, software must use a FIPS-validated encryption algorithm20\n War room for central communication and coordination; if a permanent war room is not necessary or practical, the team should create a procedure for procuring a temporary war room when needed\n Secure storage facility for securing evidence and other sensitive materials\nIncident Analysis Hardware and Software:\n Digital forensic workstations21 and/or backup devices to create disk images, preserve log files, and save other relevant incident data\n Laptops for activities such as analyzing data, sniffing packets, and writing reports\n Spare workstations, servers, and networking equipment, or the virtualized equivalents, which may be used for many purposes, such as restoring backups and trying out malware\n Blank removable media\n Portable printer to print copies of log files and other evidence from non-networked systems\n Packet sniffers and protocol analyzers to capture and analyze network traffic\n Digital forensic software to analyze disk images\n Removable media with trusted versions of programs to be used to gather evidence from systems\n Evidence gathering accessories, including hard-bound notebooks, digital cameras, audio recorders, chain of custody forms, evidence storage bags and tags, and evidence tape, to preserve evidence for possible legal actions\n# Incident Analysis Resources:\n Port lists, including commonly used ports and Trojan horse ports  Documentation for OSs, applications, protocols, and intrusion detection and antivirus products  Network diagrams and lists of critical assets, such as database servers  Current baselines of expected network, system, and application activity  Cryptographic hashes of critical files to speed incident analysis, verification, and eradication\nIncident Mitigation Software:\n Access to images of clean OS and application installations for restoration and recovery purposes\nMany incident response teams create a jump kit, which is a portable case that contains materials that may be needed during an investigation. The jump kit should be ready to go at all times. Jump kits contain many of the same items listed in the bulleted lists above. For example, each jump kit typically includes a laptop, loaded with appropriate software (e.g., packet sniffers, digital forensics). Other important materials include backup devices, blank media, and basic networking equipment and cables. Because the purpose of having a jump kit is to facilitate faster responses, the team should avoid borrowing items from the jump kit.\nEach incident handler should have access to at least two computing devices (e.g., laptops). One, such as the one from the jump kit, should be used to perform packet sniffing, malware analysis, and all other actions that risk contaminating the laptop that performs them. This laptop should be scrubbed and all software reinstalled before it is used for another incident. Note that because this laptop is special purpose, it is likely to use software other than the standard enterprise tools and configurations, and whenever possible the incident handlers should be allowed to specify basic technical requirements for these specialpurpose investigative laptops. In addition to an investigative laptop, each incident handler should also have a standard laptop, smart phone, or other computing device for writing reports, reading email, and performing other duties unrelated to the hands-on incident analysis.\nExercises involving simulated incidents can also be very useful for preparing staff for incident handling;\nsee NIST SP 800-84 for more information on exercises and Appendix A for sample exercise scenarios.\n# 3.1.2 Preventing Incidents\nKeeping the number of incidents reasonably low is very important to protect the business processes of the organization. If security controls are insufficient, higher volumes of incidents may occur, overwhelming the incident response team. This can lead to slow and incomplete responses, which translate to a larger negative business impact (e.g., more extensive damage, longer periods of service and data unavailability).\nIt is outside the scope of this document to provide specific advice on securing networks, systems, and applications. Although incident response teams are generally not responsible for securing resources, they can be advocates of sound security practices. An incident response team may be able to identify problems that the organization is otherwise not aware of; the team can play a key role in risk assessment and training by identifying gaps. Other documents already provide advice on general security concepts and operating system and application-specific guidelines.24 The following text, however, provides a brief overview of some of the main recommended practices for securing networks, systems, and applications:\n Risk Assessments. Periodic risk assessments of systems and applications should determine what risks are posed by combinations of threats and vulnerabilities. This should include understanding the applicable threats, including organization-specific threats. Each risk should be prioritized, and the risks can be mitigated, transferred, or accepted until a reasonable overall level of risk is reached. Another benefit of conducting risk assessments regularly is that critical resources are identified, allowing staff to emphasize monitoring and response activities for those resources.26\n Host Security. All hosts should be hardened appropriately using standard configurations. In addition to keeping each host properly patched, hosts should be configured to follow the principle of least privilege\u2014granting users only the privileges necessary for performing their authorized tasks. Hosts should have auditing enabled and should log significant security-related events. The security of hosts and their configurations should be continuously monitored.27 Many organizations use Security Content Automation Protocol $\\\\mathrm{(SCAP)}^{28}$ expressed operating system and application configuration checklists to assist in securing hosts consistently and effectively.29\n Network Security. The network perimeter should be configured to deny all activity that is not expressly permitted. This includes securing all connection points, such as virtual private networks (VPNs) and dedicated connections to other organizations.\n Malware Prevention. Software to detect and stop malware should be deployed throughout the organization. Malware protection should be deployed at the host level (e.g., server and workstation operating systems), the application server level (e.g., email server, web proxies), and the application client level (e.g., email clients, instant messaging clients).30\n User Awareness and Training. Users should be made aware of policies and procedures regarding appropriate use of networks, systems, and applications. Applicable lessons learned from previous incidents should also be shared with users so they can see how their actions could affect the organization. Improving user awareness regarding incidents should reduce the frequency of incidents. IT staff should be trained so that they can maintain their networks, systems, and applications in accordance with the organization\u2019s security standards.\n# 3.2 Detection and Analysis\n Incident Response Life Cycle (Detection and Analysis)\n# 3.2.1 Attack Vectors\nIncidents can occur in countless ways, so it is infeasible to develop step-by-step instructions for handling every incident. Organizations should be generally prepared to handle any incident but should focus on being prepared to handle incidents that use common attack vectors. Different types of incidents merit different response strategies. The attack vectors listed below are not intended to provide definitive classification for incidents; rather, they simply list common methods of attack, which can be used as a basis for defining more specific handling procedures.\n External/Removable Media: An attack executed from removable media or a peripheral device\u2014for example, malicious code spreading onto a system from an infected USB flash drive.\n Attrition: An attack that employs brute force methods to compromise, degrade, or destroy systems, networks, or services (e.g., a DDoS intended to impair or deny access to a service or application; a brute force attack against an authentication mechanism, such as passwords, CAPTCHAS, or digital signatures).\n Web: An attack executed from a website or web-based application\u2014for example, a cross-site scripting attack used to steal credentials or a redirect to a site that exploits a browser vulnerability and installs malware.\n Email: An attack executed via an email message or attachment\u2014for example, exploit code disguised as an attached document or a link to a malicious website in the body of an email message.\nImpersonation: An attack involving replacement of something benign with something malicious\u2014 for example, spoofing, man in the middle attacks, rogue wireless access points, and SQL injection attacks all involve impersonation.\n Improper Usage: Any incident resulting from violation of an organization\u2019s acceptable usage policies by an authorized user, excluding the above categories; for example, a user installs file sharing software, leading to the loss of sensitive data; or a user performs illegal activities on a system.\n Loss or Theft of Equipment: The loss or theft of a computing device or media used by the organization, such as a laptop, smartphone, or authentication token.\nOther: An attack that does not fit into any of the other categories.\nThis section focuses on recommended practices for handling any type of incident. It is outside the scope of this publication to give specific advice based on the attack vectors; such guidelines would be provided in separate publications addressing other incident handling topics, such as NIST SP 800-83 on malware incident prevention and handling.\n# 3.2.2 Signs of an Incident\nFor many organizations, the most challenging part of the incident response process is accurately detecting and assessing possible incidents\u2014determining whether an incident has occurred and, if so, the type, extent, and magnitude of the problem. What makes this so challenging is a combination of three factors:\nIncidents may be detected through many different means, with varying levels of detail and fidelity. Automated detection capabilities include network-based and host-based IDPSs, antivirus software, and log analyzers. Incidents may also be detected through manual means, such as problems reported by users. Some incidents have overt signs that can be easily detected, whereas others are almost impossible to detect.\n The volume of potential signs of incidents is typically high\u2014for example, it is not uncommon for an organization to receive thousands or even millions of intrusion detection sensor alerts per day. (See Section 3.2.4 for information on analyzing such alerts.)\n Deep, specialized technical knowledge and extensive experience are necessary for proper and efficient analysis of incident-related data.\nSigns of an incident fall into one of two categories: precursors and indicators. A precursor is a sign that an incident may occur in the future. An indicator is a sign that an incident may have occurred or may be occurring now.\nMost attacks do not have any identifiable or detectable precursors from the target\u2019s perspective. If precursors are detected, the organization may have an opportunity to prevent the incident by altering its security posture to save a target from attack. At a minimum, the organization could monitor activity involving the target more closely. Examples of precursors are:\n Web server log entries that show the usage of a vulnerability scanner An announcement of a new exploit that targets a vulnerability of the organization\u2019s mail server A threat from a group stating that the group will attack the organization.\nWhile precursors are relatively rare, indicators are all too common. Too many types of indicators exist to exhaustively list them, but some examples are listed below:\n A network intrusion detection sensor alerts when a buffer overflow attempt occurs against a database server. Antivirus software alerts when it detects that a host is infected with malware.\n A system administrator sees a filename with unusual characters.\n A host records an auditing configuration change in its log.  An application logs multiple failed login attempts from an unfamiliar remote system.\n An email administrator sees a large number of bounced emails with suspicious content.\n A network administrator notices an unusual deviation from typical network traffic flows.\n# 3.2.3 Sources of Precursors and Indicators\nPrecursors and indicators are identified using many different sources, with the most common being computer security software alerts, logs, publicly available information, and people.  lists common sources of precursors and indicators for each category.\nCommon Sources of Precursors and Indicators\n# 3.2.4 Incident Analysis\nIncident detection and analysis would be easy if every precursor or indicator were guaranteed to be accurate; unfortunately, this is not the case. For example, user-provided indicators such as a complaint of a server being unavailable are often incorrect. Intrusion detection systems may produce false positives\u2014 incorrect indicators. These examples demonstrate what makes incident detection and analysis so difficult: each indicator ideally should be evaluated to determine if it is legitimate. Making matters worse, the total number of indicators may be thousands or millions a day. Finding the real security incidents that occurred out of all the indicators can be a daunting task.\nEven if an indicator is accurate, it does not necessarily mean that an incident has occurred. Some indicators, such as a server crash or modification of critical files, could happen for several reasons other than a security incident, including human error. Given the occurrence of indicators, however, it is reasonable to suspect that an incident might be occurring and to act accordingly. Determining whether a particular event is actually an incident is sometimes a matter of judgment. It may be necessary to collaborate with other technical and information security personnel to make a decision. In many instances, a situation should be handled the same way regardless of whether it is security related. For example, if an organization is losing Internet connectivity every 12 hours and no one knows the cause, the staff would want to resolve the problem just as quickly and would use the same resources to diagnose the problem, regardless of its cause.\nSome incidents are easy to detect, such as an obviously defaced web page. However, many incidents are not associated with such clear symptoms. Small signs such as one change in one system configuration file may be the only indicators that an incident has occurred. In incident handling, detection may be the most difficult task. Incident handlers are responsible for analyzing ambiguous, contradictory, and incomplete symptoms to determine what has happened. Although technical solutions exist that can make detection\neasier, the best remedy is to build a team of highly experienced and proficient staff members who can analyze the precursors and indicators effectively and efficiently and take appropriate actions. Without a well-trained and capable staff, incident detection and analysis will be conducted inefficiently, and costly mistakes will be made.\nThe incident response team should work quickly to analyze and validate each incident, following a predefined process and documenting each step taken. When the team believes that an incident has occurred, the team should rapidly perform an initial analysis to determine the incident\u2019s scope, such as which networks, systems, or applications are affected; who or what originated the incident; and how the incident is occurring (e.g., what tools or attack methods are being used, what vulnerabilities are being exploited). The initial analysis should provide enough information for the team to prioritize subsequent activities, such as containment of the incident and deeper analysis of the effects of the incident.\nPerforming the initial analysis and validation is challenging. The following are recommendations for making incident analysis easier and more effective:\n Profile Networks and Systems. Profiling is measuring the characteristics of expected activity so that changes to it can be more easily identified. Examples of profiling are running file integrity checking software on hosts to derive checksums for critical files and monitoring network bandwidth usage to determine what the average and peak usage levels are on various days and times. In practice, it is difficult to detect incidents accurately using most profiling techniques; organizations should use profiling as one of several detection and analysis techniques.\n Understand Normal Behaviors. Incident response team members should study networks, systems, and applications to understand what their normal behavior is so that abnormal behavior can be recognized more easily. No incident handler will have a comprehensive knowledge of all behavior throughout the environment, but handlers should know which experts could fill in the gaps. One way to gain this knowledge is through reviewing log entries and security alerts. This may be tedious if filtering is not used to condense the logs to a reasonable size. As handlers become more familiar with the logs and alerts, they should be able to focus on unexplained entries, which are usually more important to investigate. Conducting frequent log reviews should keep the knowledge fresh, and the analyst should be able to notice trends and changes over time. The reviews also give the analyst an indication of the reliability of each source.\n Create a Log Retention Policy. Information regarding an incident may be recorded in several places, such as firewall, IDPS, and application logs. Creating and implementing a log retention policy that specifies how long log data should be maintained may be extremely helpful in analysis because older log entries may show reconnaissance activity or previous instances of similar attacks. Another reason for retaining logs is that incidents may not be discovered until days, weeks, or even months later. The length of time to maintain log data is dependent on several factors, including the organization\u2019s data retention policies and the volume of data. See NIST SP 800-92, Guide to Computer Security Log Management for additional recommendations related to logging.34\n Perform Event Correlation. Evidence of an incident may be captured in several logs that each contain different types of data\u2014a firewall log may have the source IP address that was used, whereas an application log may contain a username. A network IDPS may detect that an attack was launched against a particular host, but it may not know if the attack was successful. The analyst may need to examine the host\u2019s logs to determine that information. Correlating events among multiple indicator sources can be invaluable in validating whether a particular incident occurred.\n Keep All Host Clocks Synchronized. Protocols such as the Network Time Protocol (NTP) synchronize clocks among hosts.35 Event correlation will be more complicated if the devices reporting events have inconsistent clock settings. From an evidentiary standpoint, it is preferable to have consistent timestamps in logs\u2014for example, to have three logs that show an attack occurred at 12:07:01 a.m., rather than logs that list the attack as occurring at 12:07:01, 12:10:35, and 11:07:06.\n Maintain and Use a Knowledge Base of Information. The knowledge base should include information that handlers need for referencing quickly during incident analysis. Although it is possible to build a knowledge base with a complex structure, a simple approach can be effective. Text documents, spreadsheets, and relatively simple databases provide effective, flexible, and searchable mechanisms for sharing data among team members. The knowledge base should also contain a variety of information, including explanations of the significance and validity of precursors and indicators, such as IDPS alerts, operating system log entries, and application error codes.\n Use Internet Search Engines for Research. Internet search engines can help analysts find information on unusual activity. For example, an analyst may see some unusual connection attempts targeting TCP port 22912. Performing a search on the terms \u201cTCP,\u201d \u201cport,\u201d and $\\\\mathbf{\\\\tilde{2}}2912\\\\mathbf{\\\\tilde{\\\\gamma}}$ may return some hits that contain logs of similar activity or even an explanation of the significance of the port number. Note that separate workstations should be used for research to minimize the risk to the organization from conducting these searches.\n Run Packet Sniffers to Collect Additional Data. Sometimes the indicators do not record enough detail to permit the handler to understand what is occurring. If an incident is occurring over a network, the fastest way to collect the necessary data may be to have a packet sniffer capture network traffic. Configuring the sniffer to record traffic that matches specified criteria should keep the volume of data manageable and minimize the inadvertent capture of other information. Because of privacy concerns, some organizations may require incident handlers to request and receive permission before using packet sniffers.\n Filter the Data. There is simply not enough time to review and analyze all the indicators; at minimum the most suspicious activity should be investigated. One effective strategy is to filter out categories of indicators that tend to be insignificant. Another filtering strategy is to show only the categories of indicators that are of the highest significance; however, this approach carries substantial risk because new malicious activity may not fall into one of the chosen indicator categories.\n Seek Assistance from Others. Occasionally, the team will be unable to determine the full cause and nature of an incident. If the team lacks sufficient information to contain and eradicate the incident, then it should consult with internal resources (e.g., information security staff) and external resources (e.g., US-CERT, other CSIRTs, contractors with incident response expertise). It is important to accurately determine the cause of each incident so that it can be fully contained and the exploited vulnerabilities can be mitigated to prevent similar incidents from occurring.\n# 3.2.5 Incident Documentation\nAn incident response team that suspects that an incident has occurred should immediately start recording all facts regarding the incident.36 A logbook is an effective and simple medium for this,37 but laptops,\naudio recorders, and digital cameras can also serve this purpose.38 Documenting system events, conversations, and observed changes in files can lead to a more efficient, more systematic, and less errorprone handling of the problem. Every step taken from the time the incident was detected to its final resolution should be documented and timestamped. Every document regarding the incident should be dated and signed by the incident handler. Information of this nature can also be used as evidence in a court of law if legal prosecution is pursued. Whenever possible, handlers should work in teams of at least two: one person can record and log events while the other person performs the technical tasks. Section 3.3.2 presents more information about evidence.39\nThe incident response team should maintain records about the status of incidents, along with other pertinent information. Using an application or a database, such as an issue tracking system, helps ensure that incidents are handled and resolved in a timely manner. The issue tracking system should contain information on the following:\n The current status of the incident (new, in progress, forwarded for investigation, resolved, et  A summary of the incident\n Indicators related to the incident\n Other incidents related to this incident\n Actions taken by all incident handlers on this incident\n Chain of custody, if applicable\n Impact assessments related to the incident\n Contact information for other involved parties (e.g., system owners, system administrators)  A list of evidence gathered during the incident investigation\n Comments from incident handlers\n Next steps to be taken (e.g., rebuild the host, upgrade an application).\nThe incident response team should safeguard incident data and restrict access to it because it often contains sensitive information\u2014for example, data on exploited vulnerabilities, recent security breaches, and users that may have performed inappropriate actions. For example, only authorized personnel should have access to the incident database. Incident communications (e.g., emails) and documents should be encrypted or otherwise protected so that only authorized personnel can read them.\n# 3.2.6 Incident Prioritization\nPrioritizing the handling of the incident is perhaps the most critical decision point in the incident handling process. Incidents should not be handled on a first-come, first-served basis as a result of resource limitations. Instead, handling should be prioritized based on the relevant factors, such as the following:\n Functional Impact of the Incident. Incidents targeting IT systems typically impact the business functionality that those systems provide, resulting in some type of negative impact to the users of those systems. Incident handlers should consider how the incident will impact the existing functionality of the affected systems. Incident handlers should consider not only the current functional impact of the incident, but also the likely future functional impact of the incident if it is not immediately contained.\n Information Impact of the Incident. Incidents may affect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the organization\u2019s information. For example, a malicious agent may exfiltrate sensitive information. Incident handlers should consider how this information exfiltration will impact the organization\u2019s overall mission. An incident that results in the exfiltration of sensitive information may also affect other organizations if any of the data pertained to a partner organization.\n Recoverability from the Incident. The size of the incident and the type of resources it affects will determine the amount of time and resources that must be spent on recovering from that incident. In some instances it is not possible to recover from an incident (e.g., if the confidentiality of sensitive information has been compromised) and it would not make sense to spend limited resources on an elongated incident handling cycle, unless that effort was directed at ensuring that a similar incident did not occur in the future. In other cases, an incident may require far more resources to handle than what an organization has available. Incident handlers should consider the effort necessary to actually recover from an incident and carefully weigh that against the value the recovery effort will create and any requirements related to incident handling.\nCombining the functional impact to the organization\u2019s systems and the impact to the organization\u2019s information determines the business impact of the incident\u2014for example, a distributed denial of service attack against a public web server may temporarily reduce the functionality for users attempting to access the server, whereas unauthorized root-level access to a public web server may result in the exfiltration of personally identifiable information (PII), which could have a long-lasting impact on the organization\u2019s reputation.\nThe recoverability from the incident determines the possible responses that the team may take when handling the incident. An incident with a high functional impact and low effort to recover from is an ideal candidate for immediate action from the team. However, some incidents may not have smooth recovery paths and may need to be queued for a more strategic-level response\u2014for example, an incident that results in an attacker exfiltrating and publicly posting gigabytes of sensitive data has no easy recovery path since the data is already exposed; in this case the team may transfer part of the responsibility for handling the data exfiltration incident to a more strategic-level team that develops strategy for preventing future breaches and creates an outreach plan for alerting those individuals or organizations whose data was exfiltrated. The team should prioritize the response to each incident based on its estimate of the business impact caused by the incident and the estimated efforts required to recover from the incident.\nAn organization can best quantify the effect of its own incidents because of its situational awareness.  provides examples of functional impact categories that an organization might use for rating its own incidents. Rating incidents can be helpful in prioritizing limited resources.\nFunctional Impact Categories\n provides examples of possible information impact categories that describe the extent of information compromise that occurred during the incident. In this table, with the exception of the \u2018None\u2019 value, the categories are not mutually exclusive and the organization could choose more than one.\nInformation Impact Categories\n shows examples of recoverability effort categories that reflect the level of and type of resources required to recover from the incident.\nRecoverability Effort Categories\nOrganizations should also establish an escalation process for those instances when the team does not respond to an incident within the designated time. This can happen for many reasons: for example, cell phones may fail or people may have personal emergencies. The escalation process should state how long a person should wait for a response and what to do if no response occurs. Generally, the first step is to duplicate the initial contact. After waiting for a brief time\u2014perhaps 15 minutes\u2014the caller should escalate the incident to a higher level, such as the incident response team manager. If that person does not respond within a certain time, then the incident should be escalated again to a higher level of management. This process should be repeated until someone responds.\n# 3.2.7 Incident Notification\nWhen an incident is analyzed and prioritized, the incident response team needs to notify the appropriate individuals so that all who need to be involved will play their roles. Incident response policies should include provisions concerning incident reporting\u2014at a minimum, what must be reported to whom and at what times (e.g., initial notification, regular status updates). The exact reporting requirements vary among organizations, but parties that are typically notified include:\n Head of information security\n Local information security officer\n Other incident response teams within the organization\n External incident response teams (if appropriate)\n System owner\n Human resources (for cases involving employees, such as harassment through email)\n Public affairs (for incidents that may generate publicity)\n Legal department (for incidents with potential legal ramifications)\n US-CERT (required for Federal agencies and systems operated on behalf of the Federal govern see Section 2.3.4.3)\n Law enforcement (if appropriate)\nDuring incident handling, the team may need to provide status updates to certain parties, even in some cases the entire organization. The team should plan and prepare several communication methods, including out-of-band methods (e.g., in person, paper), and select the methods that are appropriate for a particular incident. Possible communication methods include:\n Email\n Website (internal, external, or portal)\n Telephone calls\n In person (e.g., daily briefings)\n Voice mailbox greeting (e.g., set up a separate voice mailbox for incident updates, and update the greeting message to reflect the current incident status; use the help desk\u2019s voice mail greeting)  Paper (e.g., post notices on bulletin boards and doors, hand out notices at all entrance points).\n# 3.3 Containment, Eradication, and Recovery\n Incident Response Life Cycle (Containment, Eradication, and Recovery)\n# 3.3.1 Choosing a Containment Strategy\nContainment is important before an incident overwhelms resources or increases damage. Most incidents require containment, so that is an important consideration early in the course of handling each incident. Containment provides time for developing a tailored remediation strategy. An essential part of containment is decision-making (e.g., shut down a system, disconnect it from a network, disable certain functions). Such decisions are much easier to make if there are predetermined strategies and procedures for containing the incident. Organizations should define acceptable risks in dealing with incidents and develop strategies accordingly.\nContainment strategies vary based on the type of incident. For example, the strategy for containing an email-borne malware infection is quite different from that of a network-based DDoS attack. Organizations should create separate containment strategies for each major incident type, with criteria documented clearly to facilitate decision-making. Criteria for determining the appropriate strategy include:\n Potential damage to and theft of resources\n Need for evidence preservation\n Service availability (e.g., network connectivity, services provided to external parties)  Time and resources needed to implement the strategy\n Effectiveness of the strategy (e.g., partial containment, full containment)\n Duration of the solution (e.g., emergency workaround to be removed in four hours, temporary workaround to be removed in two weeks, permanent solution).\nIn certain cases, some organizations redirect the attacker to a sandbox (a form of containment) so that they can monitor the attacker\u2019s activity, usually to gather additional evidence. The incident response team should discuss this strategy with its legal department to determine if it is feasible. Ways of monitoring an attacker\u2019s activity other than sandboxing should not be used; if an organization knows that a system has been compromised and allows the compromise to continue, it may be liable if the attacker uses the compromised system to attack other systems. The delayed containment strategy is dangerous because an attacker could escalate unauthorized access or compromise other systems.\nAnother potential issue regarding containment is that some attacks may cause additional damage when they are contained. For example, a compromised host may run a malicious process that pings another host periodically. When the incident handler attempts to contain the incident by disconnecting the compromised host from the network, the subsequent pings will fail. As a result of the failure, the malicious process may overwrite or encrypt all the data on the host\u2019s hard drive. Handlers should not assume that just because a host has been disconnected from the network, further damage to the host has been prevented.\n# 3.3.2 Evidence Gathering and Handling\nAlthough the primary reason for gathering evidence during an incident is to resolve the incident, it may also be needed for legal proceedings.42 In such cases, it is important to clearly document how all evidence, including compromised systems, has been preserved.43 Evidence should be collected according to procedures that meet all applicable laws and regulations that have been developed from previous discussions with legal staff and appropriate law enforcement agencies so that any evidence can be admissible in court.44 In addition, evidence should be accounted for at all times; whenever evidence is transferred from person to person, chain of custody forms should detail the transfer and include each party\u2019s signature. A detailed log should be kept for all evidence, including the following:\n Identifying information (e.g., the location, serial number, model number, hostname, media access control (MAC) addresses, and IP addresses of a computer)\n Name, title, and phone number of each individual who collected or handled the evidence during the investigation\n Time and date (including time zone) of each occurrence of evidence handling\n Locations where the evidence was stored.\nCollecting evidence from computing resources presents some challenges. It is generally desirable to acquire evidence from a system of interest as soon as one suspects that an incident may have occurred. Many incidents cause a dynamic chain of events to occur; an initial system snapshot may do more good in identifying the problem and its source than most other actions that can be taken at this stage. From an evidentiary standpoint, it is much better to get a snapshot of the system as-is rather than doing so after incident handlers, system administrators, and others have inadvertently altered the state of the machine during the investigation. Users and system administrators should be made aware of the steps that they should take to preserve evidence. See NIST SP 800-86, Guide to Integrating Forensic Techniques into Incident Response, for additional information on preserving evidence.\n# 3.3.3 Identifying the Attacking Hosts\nDuring incident handling, system owners and others sometimes want to or need to identify the attacking host or hosts. Although this information can be important, incident handlers should generally stay focused on containment, eradication, and recovery. Identifying an attacking host can be a time-consuming and futile process that can prevent a team from achieving its primary goal\u2014minimizing the business impact. The following items describe the most commonly performed activities for attacking host identification:\n Validating the Attacking Host\u2019s IP Address. New incident handlers often focus on the attacking host\u2019s IP address. The handler may attempt to validate that the address was not spoofed by verifying connectivity to it; however, this simply indicates that a host at that address does or does not respond to the requests. A failure to respond does not mean the address is not real\u2014for example, a host may be configured to ignore pings and traceroutes. Also, the attacker may have received a dynamic address that has already been reassigned to someone else.\n Researching the Attacking Host through Search Engines. Performing an Internet search using the apparent source IP address of an attack may lead to more information on the attack\u2014for example, a mailing list message regarding a similar attack.\n Using Incident Databases. Several groups collect and consolidate incident data from various organizations into incident databases. This information sharing may take place in many forms, such as trackers and real-time blacklists. The organization can also check its own knowledge base or issue tracking system for related activity.\n Monitoring Possible Attacker Communication Channels. Incident handlers can monitor communication channels that may be used by an attacking host. For example, many bots use IRC as their primary means of communication. Also, attackers may congregate on certain IRC channels to brag about their compromises and share information. However, incident handlers should treat any such information that they acquire only as a potential lead, not as fact.\n# 3.3.4 Eradication and Recovery\nAfter an incident has been contained, eradication may be necessary to eliminate components of the incident, such as deleting malware and disabling breached user accounts, as well as identifying and mitigating all vulnerabilities that were exploited. During eradication, it is important to identify all affected hosts within the organization so that they can be remediated. For some incidents, eradication is either not necessary or is performed during recovery.\nIn recovery, administrators restore systems to normal operation, confirm that the systems are functioning normally, and (if applicable) remediate vulnerabilities to prevent similar incidents. Recovery may involve such actions as restoring systems from clean backups, rebuilding systems from scratch, replacing compromised files with clean versions, installing patches, changing passwords, and tightening network perimeter security (e.g., firewall rulesets, boundary router access control lists). Higher levels of system logging or network monitoring are often part of the recovery process. Once a resource is successfully attacked, it is often attacked again, or other resources within the organization are attacked in a similar manner.\nEradication and recovery should be done in a phased approach so that remediation steps are prioritized. For large-scale incidents, recovery may take months; the intent of the early phases should be to increase the overall security with relatively quick (days to weeks) high value changes to prevent future incidents. The later phases should focus on longer-term changes (e.g., infrastructure changes) and ongoing work to keep the enterprise as secure as possible.\nBecause eradication and recovery actions are typically OS or application-specific, detailed recommendations and advice regarding them are outside the scope of this document.\n# 3.4 Post-Incident Activity\n Incident Response Life Cycle (Post-Incident Activity)\n# 3.4.1 Lessons Learned\nOne of the most important parts of incident response is also the most often omitted: learning and improving. Each incident response team should evolve to reflect new threats, improved technology, and lessons learned. Holding a \u201clessons learned\u201d meeting with all involved parties after a major incident, and optionally periodically after lesser incidents as resources permit, can be extremely helpful in improving security measures and the incident handling process itself. Multiple incidents can be covered in a single lessons learned meeting. This meeting provides a chance to achieve closure with respect to an incident by reviewing what occurred, what was done to intervene, and how well intervention worked. The meeting should be held within several days of the end of the incident. Questions to be answered in the meeting include:\n Exactly what happened, and at what times?\n How well did staff and management perform in dealing with the incident? Were the documented procedures followed? Were they adequate?\n What information was needed sooner?\n Were any steps or actions taken that might have inhibited the recovery?\n What would the staff and management do differently the next time a similar incident occurs?\nHow could information sharing with other organizations have been improved?\n What corrective actions can prevent similar incidents in the future?\n\u25a0  What precursors or indicators should be watched for in the future to detect similar incidents?\n What additional tools or resources are needed to detect, analyze, and mitigate future incidents?\nSmall incidents need limited post-incident analysis, with the exception of incidents performed through new attack methods that are of widespread concern and interest. After serious attacks have occurred, it is usually worthwhile to hold post-mortem meetings that cross team and organizational boundaries to provide a mechanism for information sharing. The primary consideration in holding such meetings is ensuring that the right people are involved. Not only is it important to invite people who have been involved in the incident that is being analyzed, but also it is wise to consider who should be invited for the purpose of facilitating future cooperation.\nThe success of such meetings also depends on the agenda. Collecting input about expectations and needs (including suggested topics to cover) from participants before the meeting increases the likelihood that the participants\u2019 needs will be met. In addition, establishing rules of order before or during the start of a meeting can minimize confusion and discord. Having one or more moderators who are skilled in group facilitation can yield a high payoff. Finally, it is also important to document the major points of agreement and action items and to communicate them to parties who could not attend the meeting.\nLessons learned meetings provide other benefits. Reports from these meetings are good material for training new team members by showing them how more experienced team members respond to incidents. Updating incident response policies and procedures is another important part of the lessons learned process. Post-mortem analysis of the way an incident was handled will often reveal a missing step or an inaccuracy in a procedure, providing impetus for change. Because of the changing nature of information technology and changes in personnel, the incident response team should review all related documentation and procedures for handling incidents at designated intervals.\nAnother important post-incident activity is creating a follow-up report for each incident, which can be quite valuable for future use. The report provides a reference that can be used to assist in handling similar incidents. Creating a formal chronology of events (including timestamped information such as log data from systems) is important for legal reasons, as is creating a monetary estimate of the amount of damage the incident caused. This estimate may become the basis for subsequent prosecution activity by entities such as the U.S. Attorney General\u2019s office. Follow-up reports should be kept for a period of time as specified in record retention policies.45\n# 3.4.2 Using Collected Incident Data\nLessons learned activities should produce a set of objective and subjective data regarding each incident. Over time, the collected incident data should be useful in several capacities. The data, particularly the total hours of involvement and the cost, may be used to justify additional funding of the incident response team. A study of incident characteristics may indicate systemic security weaknesses and threats, as well as changes in incident trends. This data can be put back into the risk assessment process, ultimately leading to the selection and implementation of additional controls. Another good use of the data is measuring the success of the incident response team. If incident data is collected and stored properly, it should provide several measures of the success (or at least the activities) of the incident response team. Incident data can also be collected to determine if a change to incident response capabilities causes a corresponding change in the team\u2019s performance (e.g., improvements in efficiency, reductions in costs). Furthermore, organizations that are required to report incident information will need to collect the\nnecessary data to meet their requirements. See Section 4 for additional information on sharing incident data with other organizations.\nOrganizations should focus on collecting data that is actionable, rather than collecting data simply because it is available. For example, counting the number of precursor port scans that occur each week and producing a chart at the end of the year that shows port scans increased by eight percent is not very helpful and may be quite time-consuming. Absolute numbers are not informative\u2014understanding how they represent threats to the business processes of the organization is what matters. Organizations should decide what incident data to collect based on reporting requirements and on the expected return on investment from the data (e.g., identifying a new threat and mitigating the related vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.) Possible metrics for incident-related data include:\n Number of Incidents Handled.46 Handling more incidents is not necessarily better\u2014for example, the number of incidents handled may decrease because of better network and host security controls, not because of negligence by the incident response team. The number of incidents handled is best taken as a measure of the relative amount of work that the incident response team had to perform, not as a measure of the quality of the team, unless it is considered in the context of other measures that collectively give an indication of work quality. It is more effective to produce separate incident counts for each incident category. Subcategories also can be used to provide more information. For example, a growing number of incidents performed by insiders could prompt stronger policy provisions concerning background investigations for personnel and misuse of computing resources and stronger security controls on internal networks (e.g., deploying intrusion detection software to more internal networks and hosts).\n Time Per Incident. For each incident, time can be measured in several ways:\nTotal amount of labor spent working on the incident\nElapsed time from the beginning of the incident to incident discovery, to the initial impact assessment, and to each stage of the incident handling process (e.g., containment, recovery) How long it took the incident response team to respond to the initial report of the incident How long it took to report the incident to management and, if necessary, appropriate external entities (e.g., US-CERT).\n Objective Assessment of Each Incident. The response to an incident that has been resolved can be analyzed to determine how effective it was. The following are examples of performing an objective assessment of an incident:\nReviewing logs, forms, reports, and other incident documentation for adherence to established\nincident response policies and procedures\nIdentifying which precursors and indicators of the incident were recorded to determine how\neffectively the incident was logged and identified\nDetermining if the incident caused damage before it was detected\nDetermining if the actual cause of the incident was identified, and identifying the vector of attack, the vulnerabilities exploited, and the characteristics of the targeted or victimized systems, networks, and applications \u4e00 Determining if the incident is a recurrence of a previous incident Calculating the estimated monetary damage from the incident (e.g., information and critical business processes negatively affected by the incident) Measuring the difference between the initial impact assessment and the final impact assessment (see Section 3.2.6) \u4e00 Identifying which measures, if any, could have prevented the incident.\n Subjective Assessment of Each Incident. Incident response team members may be asked to assess their own performance, as well as that of other team members and of the entire team. Another valuable source of input is the owner of a resource that was attacked, in order to determine if the owner thinks the incident was handled efficiently and if the outcome was satisfactory.\nBesides using these metrics to measure the team\u2019s success, organizations may also find it useful to periodically audit their incident response programs. Audits will identify problems and deficiencies that can then be corrected. At a minimum, an incident response audit should evaluate the following items against applicable regulations, policies, and generally accepted practices:\nIncident response policies, plans, and procedures Tools and resources Team model and structure\n Incident handler training and education\n Incident documentation and reports\n The measures of success discussed earlier in this section.\n# 3.4.3 Evidence Retention\nOrganizations should establish policy for how long evidence from an incident should be retained. Most organizations choose to retain all evidence for months or years after the incident ends. The following factors should be considered during the policy creation:\n Prosecution. If it is possible that the attacker will be prosecuted, evidence may need to be retained until all legal actions have been completed. In some cases, this may take several years. Furthermore, evidence that seems insignificant now may become more important in the future. For example, if an attacker is able to use knowledge gathered in one attack to perform a more severe attack later, evidence from the first attack may be key to explaining how the second attack was accomplished.\n Data Retention. Most organizations have data retention policies that state how long certain types of data may be kept. For example, an organization may state that email messages should be retained for only 180 days. If a disk image contains thousands of emails, the organization may not want the image to be kept for more than 180 days unless it is absolutely necessary. As discussed in Section 3.4.2, General Records Schedule (GRS) 24 specifies that incident handling records should be kept for three years.\n Cost. Original hardware (e.g., hard drives, compromised systems) that is stored as evidence, as well as hard drives and removable media that are used to hold disk images, are generally individually inexpensive. However, if an organization stores many such components for years, the cost can be substantial. The organization also must retain functional computers that can use the stored hardware and media.\n# 3.5 Incident Handling Checklist\nThe checklist in  provides the major steps to be performed in the handling of an incident. Note that the actual steps performed may vary based on the type of incident and the nature of individual incidents. For example, if the handler knows exactly what has happened based on analysis of indicators (Step 1.1), there may be no need to perform Steps 1.2 or 1.3 to further research the activity. The checklist provides guidelines to handlers on the major steps that should be performed; it does not dictate the exact sequence of steps that should always be followed.\nIncident Handling Checklist\n# 3.6 Recommendations\nThe key recommendations presented in this section for handling incidents are summarized below.\n Acquire tools and resources that may be of value during incident handling. The team will be more efficient at handling incidents if various tools and resources are already available to them. Examples include contact lists, encryption software, network diagrams, backup devices, digital forensic software, and port lists.\n Prevent incidents from occurring by ensuring that networks, systems, and applications are sufficiently secure. Preventing incidents is beneficial to the organization and also reduces the workload of the incident response team. Performing periodic risk assessments and reducing the identified risks to an acceptable level are effective in reducing the number of incidents. Awareness of security policies and procedures by users, IT staff, and management is also very important.\n Identify precursors and indicators through alerts generated by several types of security software. Intrusion detection and prevention systems, antivirus software, and file integrity checking software are valuable for detecting signs of incidents. Each type of software may detect incidents that the other types of software cannot, so the use of several types of computer security software is highly recommended. Third-party monitoring services can also be helpful.\n Establish mechanisms for outside parties to report incidents. Outside parties may want to report incidents to the organization\u2014for example, they may believe that one of the organization\u2019s users is attacking them. Organizations should publish a phone number and email address that outside parties can use to report such incidents.\n Require a baseline level of logging and auditing on all systems, and a higher baseline level on all critical systems. Logs from operating systems, services, and applications frequently provide value during incident analysis, particularly if auditing was enabled. The logs can provide information such as which accounts were accessed and what actions were performed.\n Profile networks and systems. Profiling measures the characteristics of expected activity levels so that changes in patterns can be more easily identified. If the profiling process is automated, deviations from expected activity levels can be detected and reported to administrators quickly, leading to faster detection of incidents and operational issues.\n Understand the normal behaviors of networks, systems, and applications. Team members who understand normal behavior should be able to recognize abnormal behavior more easily. This knowledge can best be gained by reviewing log entries and security alerts; the handlers should become familiar with the typical data and can investigate the unusual entries to gain more knowledge.\n Create a log retention policy. Information regarding an incident may be recorded in several places. Creating and implementing a log retention policy that specifies how long log data should be maintained may be extremely helpful in analysis because older log entries may show reconnaissance activity or previous instances of similar attacks.\n Perform event correlation. Evidence of an incident may be captured in several logs. Correlating events among multiple sources can be invaluable in collecting all the available information for an incident and validating whether the incident occurred.\nKeep all host clocks synchronized. If the devices reporting events have inconsistent clock settings, event correlation will be more complicated. Clock discrepancies may also cause issues from an evidentiary standpoint.\n Maintain and use a knowledge base of information. Handlers need to reference information quickly during incident analysis; a centralized knowledge base provides a consistent, maintainable source of information. The knowledge base should include general information, such as data on precursors and indicators of previous incidents.\n#  Start recording all information as soon as the team suspects that an incident has occurred.\nEvery step taken, from the time the incident was detected to its final resolution, should be documented and timestamped. Information of this nature can serve as evidence in a court of law if legal prosecution is pursued. Recording the steps performed can also lead to a more efficient, systematic, and less error-prone handling of the problem.\n Safeguard incident data. It often contains sensitive information regarding such things as vulnerabilities, security breaches, and users that may have performed inappropriate actions. The team should ensure that access to incident data is restricted properly, both logically and physically.\n Prioritize handling of the incidents based on the relevant factors. Because of resource limitations, incidents should not be handled on a first-come, first-served basis. Instead, organizations should establish written guidelines that outline how quickly the team must respond to the incident and what actions should be performed, based on relevant factors such as the functional and information impact of the incident, and the likely recoverability from the incident. This saves time for the incident handlers and provides a justification to management and system owners for their actions. Organizations should also establish an escalation process for those instances when the team does not respond to an incident within the designated time.\nInclude provisions regarding incident reporting in the organization\u2019s incident response policy. Organizations should specify which incidents must be reported, when they must be reported, and to whom. The parties most commonly notified are the CIO, head of information security, local information security officer, other incident response teams within the organization, and system owners.\n Establish strategies and procedures for containing incidents. It is important to contain incidents quickly and effectively to limit their business impact. Organizations should define acceptable risks in containing incidents and develop strategies and procedures accordingly. Containment strategies should vary based on the type of incident.\n Follow established procedures for evidence gathering and handling. The team should clearly document how all evidence has been preserved. Evidence should be accounted for at all times. The team should meet with legal staff and law enforcement agencies to discuss evidence handling, then develop procedures based on those discussions.\n Capture volatile data from systems as evidence. This includes lists of network connections, processes, login sessions, open files, network interface configurations, and the contents of memory. Running carefully chosen commands from trusted media can collect the necessary information without damaging the system\u2019s evidence.\n Obtain system snapshots through full forensic disk images, not file system backups. Disk images should be made to sanitized write-protectable or write-once media. This process is superior to a file system backup for investigatory and evidentiary purposes. Imaging is also valuable in that it is much safer to analyze an image than it is to perform analysis on the original system because the analysis may inadvertently alter the original.\nHold lessons learned meetings after major incidents. Lessons learned meetings are extremely helpful in improving security measures and the incident handling process itself.\nThe nature of contemporary threats and attacks makes it more important than ever for organizations to work together during incident response. Organizations should ensure that they effectively coordinate portions of their incident response activities with appropriate partners. The most important aspect of incident response coordination is information sharing, where different organizations share threat, attack, and vulnerability information with each other so that each organization\u2019s knowledge benefits the other. Incident information sharing is frequently mutually beneficial because the same threats and attacks often affect multiple organizations simultaneously.\nAs mentioned in Section 2, coordinating and sharing information with partner organizations can strengthen the organization\u2019s ability to effectively respond to IT incidents. For example, if an organization identifies some behavior on its network that seems suspicious and sends information about the event to a set of trusted partners, someone else in that network may have already seen similar behavior and be able to respond with additional details about the suspicious activity, including signatures, other indicators to look for, or suggested remediation actions. Collaboration with the trusted partner can enable an organization to respond to the incident more quickly and efficiently than an organization operating in isolation.\nThis increase in efficiency for standard incident response techniques is not the only incentive for crossorganization coordination and information sharing. Another incentive for information sharing is the ability to respond to incidents using techniques that may not be available to a single organization, especially if that organization is small to medium size. For example, a small organization that identifies a particularly complex instance of malware on its network may not have the in-house resources to fully analyze the malware and determine its effect on the system. In this case, the organization may be able to leverage a trusted information sharing network to effectively outsource the analysis of this malware to third party resources that have the adequate technical capabilities to perform the malware analysis.\nThis section of the document highlights coordination and information sharing. Section 4.1 presents an overview of incident response coordination and focuses on the need for cross-organization coordination to supplement organization incident response processes. Section 4.2 discusses techniques for information sharing across organizations, and Section 4.3 examines how to restrict what information is shared or not shared with other organizations.\n# 4.1 Coordination\nAs discussed in Section 2.3.4, an organization may need to interact with several types of external organizations in the course of conducting incident response activities. Examples of these organizations include other incident response teams, law enforcement agencies, Internet service providers, and constituents and customers. An organization\u2019s incident response team should plan its incident coordination with those parties before incidents occur to ensure that all parties know their roles and that effective lines of communication are established. provides a sample view into an organization performing coordination at every phase of the incident response lifecycle, highlighting that coordination is valuable throughout the lifecycle.\n Incident Response Coordination\n# 4.1.1 Coordination Relationships\nAn incident response team within an organization may participate in different types of coordination arrangements, depending on the type of organization with which it is coordinating. For example, the team members responsible for the technical details of incident response may coordinate with operational colleagues at partner organizations to share strategies for mitigating an attack spanning multiple organizations. Alternatively, during the same incident, the incident response team manager may coordinate with ISACs to satisfy necessary reporting requirements and seek advice and additional resources for successfully responding to the incident.  provides some examples of coordination relationships that may exist when collaborating with outside organizations.\nCoordination Relationships\nOrganizations may find it challenging to build the relationships needed for coordination. Good places to start building a community include the industry sector that the organization belongs to and the geographic region where the organization operates. An organization\u2019s incident response team can try to form relationships with other teams (at the team-to-team level) within its own industry sector and region, or join established bodies within the industry sector that already facilitate information sharing. Another consideration for building relationships is that some relationships are mandatory and others voluntary; for example, team-to-coordinating team relationships are often mandatory, while team-to-team relationships are usually voluntary. Organizations pursue voluntary relationships because they fulfill mutual selfinterests. Mandatory relationships are usually defined by a regulatory body within the industry or by another entity.\n# 4.1.2 Sharing Agreements and Reporting Requirements\nOrganizations trying to share information with external organizations should consult with their legal department before initiating any coordination efforts. There may be contracts or other agreements that need to be put into place before discussions occur. An example is a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) to protect the confidentiality of the organization\u2019s most sensitive information. Organizations should also consider any existing requirements for reporting, such as sharing incident information with an ISAC or reporting incidents to a higher-level CIRT.\n# 4.2 Information Sharing Techniques\nInformation sharing is a key element of enabling coordination across organizations. Even the smallest organizations need to be able to share incident information with peers and partners in order to deal with many incidents effectively. Organizations should perform such information sharing throughout the incident response life cycle and not wait until an incident has been fully resolved before sharing details of it with others. Section 4.3 discusses the types of incident information that organizations may or may not want to share with others.\nThis section focuses on techniques for information sharing. Section 4.2.1 looks at ad hoc methods, while Section 4.2.2 examines partially automated methods. Finally, Section 4.2.3 discusses security considerations related to information sharing.\n# 4.2.1 Ad Hoc\nMost incident information sharing has traditionally occurred through ad hoc methods, such as email, instant messaging clients, and phone. Ad hoc information sharing mechanisms normally rely on an individual employee\u2019s connections with employees in incident response teams of partner organizations. The employee uses these connections to manually share information with peers and coordinate with them to construct strategies for responding to an incident. Depending on the size of the organization, these ad hoc techniques may be the most cost-effective way of sharing information with partner organizations. However, due to the informal nature of ad hoc information sharing, it is not possible to guarantee that the information sharing processes will always operate. For example, if a particularly well-connected employee resigns from an incident response team, that team may temporarily lose the majority of information sharing channels it relies on to effectively coordinate with outside organizations.\nAd hoc information sharing methods are also largely unstandardized in terms of what information is communicated and how that communication occurs. Because of the lack of standardization, they tend to require manual intervention and to be more resource-intensive to process than the alternative, partially automated methods. Whenever possible an organization should attempt to formalize its information sharing strategies through formal agreements with partner organizations and technical mechanisms that will help to partially automate the sharing of information.\n# 4.2.2 Partially Automated\nOrganizations should attempt to automate as much of the information sharing process as possible to make cross-organizational coordination efficient and cost effective. In reality, it will not be possible to fully automate the sharing of all incident information, nor will it be desirable due to security and trust considerations. Organizations should attempt to achieve a balance of automated information sharing overlaid with human-centric processes for managing the information flow.\nWhen engineering automated information sharing solutions, organizations should first consider what types of information they will communicate with partners. The organization may want to construct a formal data dictionary enumerating all entities and relationships between entities that they will wish to share. Once the organization understands the types of information they will share, it is necessary to construct formal, machine-processable models to capture this information. Wherever possible, an organization should use existing data exchange standards for representing the information they need to share.47 The organization should work with its partner organizations when deciding on the data exchange models to ensure that the standards selected are compatible with the partner organization\u2019s incident response systems. When selecting existing data exchange models, organizations may prefer to select multiple models that model different aspects of the incident response domain and then leverage these models in a modular fashion, communicating only the information needed at a specific decision point in the life cycle. Appendix E provides a non-exhaustive list of existing standards defining data exchange models that are applicable to the incident response domain.\nIn addition to selecting the data exchange models for sharing incident information, an organization must also work with its partner organizations to agree on the technical transport mechanisms for enabling the information exchange to occur in an automated fashion. These transport mechanisms include, at a minimum, the transport protocol for exchanging the information, the architectural model for communicating with an information resource, and the applicable ports and domain names for accessing an information resource in a particular organization. For example, a group of partner organizations may decide to exchange incident information using a Representational State Transfer (REST) architecture to exchange IODEF/Real-Time Inter-Network Defense (RID) data over Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) on port 4590 of a specific domain name within each organization\u2019s DMZ.\n# 4.2.3 Security Considerations\nThere are several security considerations that incident response teams should consider when planning their information sharing. One is being able to designate who can see which pieces of incident information (e.g., protection of sensitive information). It may also be necessary to perform data sanitization or scrubbing to remove sensitive pieces of data from the incident information without disturbing the information on precursors, indicators, and other technical information. See Section 4.3 for more information on granular information sharing. The incident response team should also ensure that the necessary measures are taken to protect information shared with the team by other organizations.\nThere are also many legal issues to consider regarding data sharing. See Section 4.1.2 for additional information.\n# 4.3 Granular Information Sharing\nOrganizations need to balance the benefits of information sharing with the drawbacks of sharing sensitive information, ideally sharing the necessary information and only the necessary information with the appropriate parties. Organizations can think of their incident information as being comprised of two types of information: business impact and technical. Business impact information is often shared in the context of a team-to-coordinating-team relationship as defined in Section 4.1.1, while technical information is often shared within all three types of coordination relationships. This section discusses both types of information and provides recommendations for performing granular information sharing.\n# 4.3.1 Business Impact Information\nBusiness impact information involves how the incident is affecting the organization in terms of mission impact, financial impact, etc. Such information, at least at a summary level, is often reported to higherlevel coordinating incident response teams to communicate an estimate of the damage caused by the incident. Coordinating response teams may need this impact information to make decisions regarding the degree of assistance to provide to the reporting organization. A coordinating team may also use this information to make decisions relative to how a specific incident will affect other organizations in the community they represent.\nCoordinating teams may require member organizations to report on some degree of business impact information. For example, a coordinating team may require a member organization to report impact information using the categories defined in Section 3.2.6. In this case, for a hypothetical incident an organization would report that it has a functional impact of medium, an information impact of none, and will require extended recoverability time. This high-level information would alert the coordinating team that the member organization requires some level of additional resources to recover from the incident. The coordinating team could then pursue additional communication with the member organization to determine how many resources are required as well as the type of resources based on the technical information provided about the incident.\nBusiness impact information is only useful for reporting to organizations that have some interest in ensuring the mission of the organization experiencing the incident. In many cases, incident response teams should avoid sharing business impact information with outside organizations unless there is a clear value proposition or formal reporting requirements. When sharing information with peer and partner organizations, incident response teams should focus on exchanging technical information as outlined in Section 4.3.2.\n# 4.3.2 Technical Information\nThere are many different types of technical indicators signifying the occurrence of an incident within an organization. These indicators originate from the variety of technical information associated with incidents, such as the hostnames and IP addresses of attacking hosts, samples of malware, precursors and indicators of similar incidents, and types of vulnerabilities exploited in an incident. Section 3.2.2 provides an overview of how organizations should collect and utilize these indicators to help identify an incident that is in progress. In addition, Section 3.2.3 provides a listing of common sources of incident indicator data.\nWhile organizations gain value from collecting their own internal indicators, they may gain additional value from analyzing indicators received from partner organizations and sharing internal indicators for external analysis and use. If the organization receives external indicator data pertaining to an incident they have not seen, they can use that indicator data to identify the incident as it begins to occur. Similarly, an organization may use external indicator data to detect an ongoing incident that it was not aware of due to the lack of internal resources to capture the specific indicator data. Organizations may also benefit from sharing their internal indicator data with external organizations. For example, if they share technical information pertaining to an incident they are experiencing, a partner organization may respond with a suggested remediation strategy for handling that incident.\nOrganizations should share as much of this information as possible; however, there may be both security and liability reasons why an organization would not want to reveal the details of an exploited vulnerability. External indicators, such as the general characteristics of attacks and the identity of attacking hosts, are usually safe to share with others. Organizations should consider which types of technical information should or should not be shared with various parties, and then endeavor to share as much of the appropriate information as possible with other organizations.\nTechnical indicator data is useful when it allows an organization to identify an actual incident. However, not all indicator data received from external sources will pertain to the organization receiving it. In some cases, this external data will generate false positives within the receiving organization's network and may cause resources to be spent on nonexistent problems.\nOrganizations participating in incident information sharing should have staff skilled in taking technical indicator information from sharing communities and disseminating that information throughout the enterprise, preferably in an automated way. Organizations should also attempt to ensure that they only share an indicator for which they have a relatively high level of confidence that it signifies an actual incident.\n# 4.4 Recommendations\nThe key recommendations presented in this section for handling incidents are summarized below.\n Plan incident coordination with external parties before incidents occur. Examples of external parties include other incident response teams, law enforcement agencies, Internet service providers, and constituents and customers. This planning helps ensure that all parties know their roles and that effective lines of communication are established.\n Consult with the legal department before initiating any coordination efforts. There may be contracts or other agreements that need to be put into place before discussions occur.\n Perform incident information sharing throughout the incident response life cycle. Information sharing is a key element of enabling coordination across organizations. Organizations should not wait until an incident has been fully resolved before sharing details of it with others.\n Attempt to automate as much of the information sharing process as possible. This makes crossorganizational coordination efficient and cost effective. Organizations should attempt to achieve a balance of automated information sharing overlaid with human-centric processes for managing the information flow.\nBalance the benefits of information sharing with the drawbacks of sharing sensitive information. Ideally organizations should share the necessary information and only the necessary information with the appropriate parties. Business impact information is often shared in a team-tocoordinating team relationship, while technical information is often shared within all types of coordination relationships. When sharing information with peer and partner organizations, incident response teams should focus on exchanging technical information.\n Share as much of the appropriate incident information as possible with other organizations. Organizations should consider which types of technical information should or should not be shared with various parties. For example, external indicators, such as the general characteristics of attacks and the identity of attacking hosts, are usually safe to share with others, but there may be both security and liability reasons why an organization would not want to reveal the details of an exploited vulnerability.\nIncident handling scenarios provide an inexpensive and effective way to build incident response skills and identify potential issues with incident response processes. The incident response team or team members are presented with a scenario and a list of related questions. The team then discusses each question and determines the most likely answer. The goal is to determine what the team would really do and to compare that with policies, procedures, and generally recommended practices to identify discrepancies or deficiencies. For example, the answer to one question may indicate that the response would be delayed because the team lacks a piece of software or because another team does not provide off-hours support.\nOrganizations should identify a standard set of incident-related data elements to be collected for each incident. This effort will not only facilitate more effective and consistent incident handling, but also assist the organization in meeting applicable incident reporting requirements. The organization should designate a set of basic elements (e.g., incident reporter\u2019s name, phone number, and location) to be collected when the incident is reported and an additional set of elements to be collected by the incident handlers during their response. The two sets of elements would be the basis for the incident reporting database, previously discussed in Section 3.2.5. The lists below provide suggestions of what information to collect for incidents and are not intended to be comprehensive. Each organization should create its own list of elements based on several factors, including its incident response team model and structure and its definition of the term \u201cincident.\u201d\n# B.1 Basic Data Elements\nContact Information for the Incident Reporter and Handler\nOrganizational unit (e.g., agency, department, division, team) and affiliation\nEmail address\nPhone number\nLocation (e.g., mailing address, office room number)\nIncident Details\nStatus change date/timestamps (including time zone): when the incident started, when the incident was discovered/detected, when the incident was reported, when the incident was resolved/ended, etc.\nPhysical location of the incident (e.g., city, state)\nCurrent status of the incident (e.g., ongoing attack)\nSource/cause of the incident (if known), including hostnames and IP addresses\nDescription of the incident (e.g., how it was detected, what occurred)\nDescription of affected resources (e.g., networks, hosts, applications, data), including systems\u2019 hostnames, IP addresses, and function\nIf known, incident category, vectors of attack associated with the incident, and indicators related to the incident (traffic patterns, registry keys, etc.)\nPrioritization factors (functional impact, information impact, recoverability, etc.)\nMitigating factors (e.g., stolen laptop containing sensitive data was using full disk encryption) Response actions performed (e.g., shut off host, disconnected host from network)\nOther organizations contacted (e.g., software vendor)\nGeneral Comments\n# B.2 Incident Handler Data Elements\nCurrent Status of the Incident Response\nSummary of the Incident\nIncident Handling Actions\nLog of actions taken by all handlers Contact information for all involved parties List of evidence gathered\nIncident Handler Comments\nCause of the Incident (e.g., misconfigured application, unpatched host)\nCost of the Incident\nBusiness Impact of the Incident49\n# Appendix C\u2014Glossary\nSelected terms used in the publication are defined below.\nBaselining: Monitoring resources to determine typical utilization patterns so that significant deviations can be detected.\nComputer Security Incident: See \u201cincident.\u201d\nComputer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT): A capability set up for the purpose of assisting in responding to computer security-related incidents; also called a Computer Incident Response Team (CIRT) or a CIRC (Computer Incident Response Center, Computer Incident Response Capability).\nEvent: Any observable occurrence in a network or system.\nFalse Positive: An alert that incorrectly indicates that malicious activity is occurring.\nIncident: A violation or imminent threat of violation of computer security policies, acceptable use policies, or standard security practices.\nIncident Handling: The mitigation of violations of security policies and recommended practices.\nIncident Response: See \u201cincident handling.\u201d\nIndicator: A sign that an incident may have occurred or may be currently occurring.\nIntrusion Detection and Prevention System (IDPS): Software that automates the process of monitoring the events occurring in a computer system or network and analyzing them for signs of possible incidents and attempting to stop detected possible incidents.\nMalware: A virus, worm, Trojan horse, or other code-based malicious entity that successfully infects a host.\nPrecursor: A sign that an attacker may be preparing to cause an incident.\nProfiling: Measuring the characteristics of expected activity so that changes to it can be more easily identified.\nSignature: A recognizable, distinguishing pattern associated with an attack, such as a binary string in a virus or a particular set of keystrokes used to gain unauthorized access to a system.\nSocial Engineering: An attempt to trick someone into revealing information (e.g., a password) that can be used to attack systems or networks.\nThreat: The potential source of an adverse event.\nVulnerability: A weakness in a system, application, or network that is subject to exploitation or misuse.\nSelected acronyms used in the publication are defined below.\n1. CERIAS\n2. CERT\u00ae/C\n3. GFIRST\nComputer Crime and Intellectual Property Section Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance a C CERT\u00ae Coordination Center Chief Information Officer Computer Incident Response Capability Computer Incident Response Center Computer Incident Response Team Chief Information Security Officer Computer Security Incident Response Capability Computer Security Incident Response Team Distributed Denial of Service Department of Homeland Security Domain Name System Denial of Service Frequently Asked Questions Federal Bureau of Investigation Federal Information Processing Standards Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams Federal Information Security Management Act General Accountability Office Government Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams General Records Schedule HyperText Transfer Protocol Internet Assigned Numbers Authority Intrusion Detection and Prevention System Internet Engineering Task Force Internet Protocol Interagency Report Internet Relay Chat Information Sharing and Analysis Center Internet Service Provider Information Technology Information Technology Laboratory Media Access Control Memorandum of Understanding Managed Security Services Provider Network Address Translation Non-Disclosure Agreement National Institute of Standards and Technology National Software Reference Library Network Time Protocol National Vulnerability Database Office of Inspector General Office of Management and Budget Operating System Personally Identifiable Information Personal Identification Number\nPOC Point of Contact EN-ISAC Research and Education Networking Information Sharing and Analysis Center\nRFC Request for Comment\nRID Real-Time Inter-Network Defense\nSIEM Security Information and Event Management LA Service Level Agreement\nSOP Standard Operating Procedure\nSP Special Publication\nTCP Transmission Control Protocol\nTCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol\nTERENA Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association\nUDP User Datagram Protocol\nURL Uniform Resource Locator S-CERT United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team\nVPN Virtual Private Network\nThe lists below provide examples of resources that may be helpful in establishing and maintaining an incident response capability.\n# Incident Response Organizations\n# NIST Publications\n# Data Exchange Specifications Applicable to Incident Handling\nUsers, system administrators, information security staff members, and others within organizations may have questions about incident response. The following are frequently asked questions (FAQ). Organizations are encouraged to customize this FAQ and make it available to their user community.\n# 1\\. What is an incident?\nIn general, an incident is a violation of computer security policies, acceptable use policies, or standard computer security practices. Examples of incidents are:\n An attacker commands a botnet to send high volumes of connection requests to one of an organization\u2019s web servers, causing it to crash.\n Users are tricked into opening a \u201cquarterly report\u201d sent via email that is actually malware; running the tool has infected their computers and established connections with an external host.\n A perpetrator obtains unauthorized access to sensitive data and threatens to release the detai to the press if the organization does not pay a designated sum of money. A user provides illegal copies of software to others through peer-to-peer file sharing services.\n# 2\\. What is incident handling?\nIncident handling is the process of detecting and analyzing incidents and limiting the incident\u2019s effect. For example, if an attacker breaks into a system through the Internet, the incident handling process should detect the security breach. Incident handlers will then analyze the data and determine how serious the attack is. The incident will be prioritized, and the incident handlers will take action to ensure that the progress of the incident is halted and that the affected systems return to normal operation as soon as possible.\n# 3\\. What is incident response?\nThe terms \u201cincident handling\u201d and \u201cincident response\u201d are synonymous in this document.50\n# 4\\. What is an incident response team?\nAn incident response team (also known as a Computer Security Incident Response Team \\[CSIRT\\]) is responsible for providing incident response services to part or all of an organization. The team receives information on possible incidents, investigates them, and takes action to ensure that the damage caused by the incidents is minimized.\n# 5\\. What services does the incident response team provide?\nThe particular services that incident response teams offer vary widely among organizations. Besides performing incident handling, most teams also assume responsibility for intrusion detection system monitoring and management. A team may also distribute advisories regarding new threats, and educate users and IT staff on their roles in incident prevention and handling.\n# 6\\. To whom should incidents be reported?\nOrganizations should establish clear points of contact (POC) for reporting incidents internally. Some organizations will structure their incident response capability so that all incidents are reported directly to the incident response team, whereas others will use existing support\nstructures, such as the IT help desk, for an initial POC. The organization should recognize that external parties, such as other incident response teams, would report some incidents. Federal agencies are required under the law to report all incidents to the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT). All organizations are encouraged to report incidents to their appropriate Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs). If an organization does not have its own CSIRT to contact, it can report incidents to other organizations, including Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs).\n# 7\\. How are incidents reported?\nMost organizations have multiple methods for reporting an incident. Different reporting methods may be preferable as a result of variations in the skills of the person reporting the activity, the urgency of the incident, and the sensitivity of the incident. A phone number should be established to report emergencies. An email address may be provided for informal incident reporting, whereas a web-based form may be useful in formal incident reporting. Sensitive information can be provided to the team by using a public key published by the team to encrypt the material.\n# 8\\. What information should be provided when reporting an incident?\nThe more precise the information is, the better. For example, if a workstation appears to have been infected by malware, the incident report should include as much of the following data as practical:\n The user\u2019s name, user ID, and contact information (e.g., phone number, email address)\n The workstation\u2019s location, model number, serial number, hostname, and IP address\n The date and time that the incident occurred\n A step-by-step explanation of what happened, including what was done to the workstation after the infection was discovered. This explanation should be detailed, including the exact wording of messages, such as those displayed by the malware or by antivirus software alerts.\n# 9\\. How quickly does the incident response team respond to an incident report?\nThe response time depends on several factors, such as the type of incident, the criticality of the resources and data that are affected, the severity of the incident, existing Service Level Agreements (SLA) for affected resources, the time and day of the week, and other incidents that the team is handling. Generally, the highest priority is handling incidents that are likely to cause the most damage to the organization or to other organizations.\n# 10\\. When should a person involved with an incident contact law enforcement?\nCommunications with law enforcement agencies should be initiated by the incident response team members, the chief information officer (CIO), or other designated official\u2014users, system administrators, system owners, and other involved parties should not initiate contact.\n# 11\\. What should someone do who discovers that a system has been attacked?\nThe person should immediately stop using the system and contact the incident response team. The person may need to assist in the initial handling of the incident\u2014for instance, physically monitoring the system until incident handlers arrive to protect evidence on the system.\n# 12\\. What should someone do who is contacted by the media regarding an incident?\nA person may answer the media\u2019s questions in accordance with the organization\u2019s policy regarding incidents and outside parties. If the person is not qualified to represent the organization in terms of discussing the incident, the person should make no comment regarding the incident, other than to refer the caller to the organization\u2019s public affairs office. This will allow the public affairs office to provide accurate and consistent information to the media and the public.\nThis is a list of the major steps that should be performed when a technical professional believes that a\nserious incident has occurred and the organization does not have an incident response capability available.\nThis serves as a basic reference of what to do for someone who is faced with a crisis and does not have\ntime to read through this entire document.\n01. Document everything. This effort includes every action that is performed, every piece of evidence, and every conversation with users, system owners, and others regarding the incident.\n02. Find a coworker who can provide assistance. Handling the incident will be much easier if two or more people work together. For example, one person can perform actions while the other documents them.\n03. Analyze the evidence to confirm that an incident has occurred. Perform additional research as necessary (e.g., Internet search engines, software documentation) to better understand the evidence. Reach out to other technical professionals within the organization for additional help.\n04. Notify the appropriate people within the organization. This should include the chief information officer (CIO), the head of information security, and the local security manager. Use discretion when discussing details of an incident with others; tell only the people who need to know and use communication mechanisms that are reasonably secure. (If the attacker has compromised email services, do not send emails about the incident.)\n05. Notify US-CERT and/or other external organizations for assistance in dealing with the incident.\n06. Stop the incident if it is still in progress. The most common way to do this is to disconnect affected systems from the network. In some cases, firewall and router configurations may need to be modified to stop network traffic that is part of an incident, such as a denial of service (DoS) attack.\n07. Preserve evidence from the incident. Make backups (preferably disk image backups, not file system backups) of affected systems. Make copies of log files that contain evidence related to the incident.\n08. Wipe out all effects of the incident. This effort includes malware infections, inappropriate materials (e.g., pirated software), Trojan horse files, and any other changes made to systems by incidents. If a system has been fully compromised, rebuild it from scratch or restore it from a known good backup.\n09. Identify and mitigate all vulnerabilities that were exploited. The incident may have occurred by taking advantage of vulnerabilities in operating systems or applications. It is critical to identify such vulnerabilities and eliminate or otherwise mitigate them so that the incident does not recur.\n10. Confirm that operations have been restored to normal. Make sure that data, applications, and other services affected by the incident have been returned to normal operations.\n11. Create a final report. This report should detail the incident handling process. It also should provide an executive summary of what happened and how a formal incident response capability would have helped to handle the situation, mitigate the risk, and limit the damage more quickly."
  },
  {
    "Title": "Essential Guide to the Digital Forensics Process - Fidelis Security",
    "URL": "https://fidelissecurity.com/cybersecurity-101/learn/digital-forensic-investigation-process/",
    "Query": "digital forensics investigation",
    "Content cleaned": "Yes (reduced from 21171 to 15088 chars)",
    "Content": "The digital forensics process involves identifying, preserving, analyzing, documenting, and presenting digital evidence. This article will explain each step, providing a clear understanding of how digital investigations are conducted.\n## Understanding Digital Forensics\nDigital forensics, a specialized branch of forensic science, focuses on recovering and investigating material from digital devices. It is vital in preventing and solving crimes committed using digital technology, including cybercrime and fraud. Retrieving and analyzing digital information, or computer forensics, involves examining digital media to uncover evidence. The growing demand for computer forensic talent underscores the importance of digital forensics in modern investigations.\nDigital evidence includes a range of data types, such as logs from network activity, emails, documents, databases, and audio/video recordings, as well as digital data from mobile phones, laptops, and cloud software. This evidence is vital for presenting digital evidence in a court of law. Forensic investigators identify and collect this evidence using well-defined forensic methods to ensure its integrity and authenticity.\nBeyond law enforcement agencies, digital forensics is utilized in commercial investigations and private businesses for audits and compliance. Companies rely on digital forensics to uncover fraud, ensure data protection, and maintain regulatory compliance. The growing variety of digital evidence types necessitates the use of advanced forensic tools and techniques, making digital forensics an ever evolving and essential field.\n## Phases of a Digital Forensics Investigation\nA digital forensics investigation process involves several key phases:\n1. Identification\n2. Preservation\n3. Extraction and analysis\n4. Documentation\n5. Presentation\nThese phases ensure the effective management, integrity, and admissibility of digital evidence in court.\nEach phase carries its own significance and methodologies, which will be elaborated upon.\n### Identification Phase\nThe identification phase is the initial and one of the most critical steps in a digital forensics investigation, where forensic investigators pinpoint potential sources of digital evidence. This involves identifying a range of devices, including desktops, laptops, servers, smartphones, tablets, and external storage media.\nMobile device forensics zeroes in on smartphones and tablets as evidence sources. Investigators meticulously document all devices that may hold relevant data. This thorough identification ensures that no critical piece of evidence is overlooked during the investigation process.\n### Preservation Phase\nFollowing identification, the preservation phase secures data to maintain its integrity for future analysis. The aim is to isolate, secure, and preserve data to prevent tampering.\nTools like FTK Imager create exact digital copies, known as forensic images, without compromising the original evidence. Hardware tools, such as write blockers, maintain evidence integrity by preventing data modifications during analysis.\nThe original data is securely stored in a safe location. Utilizing well-defined forensic methods and secure environments is key to maintaining data integrity throughout the investigation.\n### Extraction and Analysis Phase\nIn the extraction and analysis phase, investigators employ specialized techniques to retrieve relevant data from identified devices. This involves data acquisition, or the retrieval of Electronically Stored Information from suspected digital assets. A methodical, repeatable approach ensures reliability and accuracy in analyzing digital evidence and to store digital data.\nAdvanced techniques are then used to examine the extracted data for evidence, which can be presented in court. Forensic image analysis and email forensics are commonly employed to verify image file authenticity and recover deleted emails, respectively.\nDigital forensic tools are essential for uncovering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence during a digital forensic investigation conducted by a digital forensic investigator using digital forensic techniques and digital investigations.\n### Documentation Phase\nMeticulous documentation maintains a clear record of the investigation process and its findings. This phase involves accurately documenting all findings to support the legal admissibility of evidence. Investigators must follow specific legal protocols to validate evidence collection.\nMaintaining a chain of custody for all collected data is crucial, ensuring that evidence remains untampered from collection to court presentation. Proper documentation supports legal proceedings and provides transparency and accountability throughout the investigation.\n### Presentation Phase\nThe final phase, presentation, involves compiling and communicating findings to relevant stakeholders, often requiring expert testimony to explain technical details. This ensures that all significant data is accurately represented.\nResults are communicated clearly and concisely to facilitate stakeholder understanding. Expert testimony may be needed to explain the methodologies and technical findings.\nThis phase is crucial for ensuring that the evidence is presented effectively in legal or corporate settings.\n## Tools and Techniques Used in Digital Forensics\nDigital forensics employs various tools and techniques to uncover and analyze evidence, classified into open-source tools, commercial software solutions, and hardware tools. The internet and mobile device evolution has expanded digital evidence types, necessitating advanced forensic tools and techniques.\nLet\u2019s explore some of the most commonly used tools in digital forensics.\n### Open-Source Tools\nOpen-source tools are popular in digital forensics for their accessibility and effectiveness. One such tool, The Sleuth Kit, is used for extracting and analyzing data from disk images, aiding professionals during incident response or from live systems.\nAnother notable open-source tool, Xplico, is a network forensic analysis tool (NFAT) with components like Decoder Manager, IP Decoder, Data Manipulators, and Visualization System, making it powerful for analyzing network traffic.\n### Commercial Software Solutions\nCommercial software solutions are crucial in digital forensics. FTK Imager, for instance, allows for data preview and creating forensic images, ensuring evidence integrity.\nFTK Imager is a vital tool for forensic professionals conducting thorough investigations.\n### Hardware Tools\nHardware tools are vital in digital forensics for effective data extraction and analysis. X-Ways Forensics is favored for manual analysis, offering robust features for disk examination. The capabilities of X-Ways Forensics allow for in-depth analysis, making it a valuable resource in the digital forensics\u2019 toolset.\nIncorporating tools like X-Ways Forensics enhances investigation thoroughness and reliability, essential for recovering deleted files and analyzing data from various devices.\nHow to Gain the Decisive Advantage in the Cyber Battle\n_Download this paper to uncover:_\n- Methods to secure your enterprise network\n- Indispensable SOC tools\n- Strategies for re-thinking the security stack\nGet your Free Copy\n## Challenges in Digital Forensics Investigations\nDigital forensics investigators face many challenges due to rapidly evolving technology and complex digital environments, including handling encrypted data, navigating cloud and IoT forensics, and addressing legal and ethical considerations.\nLet\u2019s delve into these challenges to understand their impact on digital forensics investigations.\n### Handling Encrypted Data\nHandling encrypted data is a major challenge in digital forensics. Advanced encryption algorithms complicate access and analysis, requiring specialized techniques and tools to decrypt data without compromising integrity.\n### Cloud and IoT Forensics\nReliance on cloud services presents unique challenges for digital forensics, as analyzing cloud-stored data demands new forensic techniques due to its distributed nature. The Internet of Things (IoT) is expanding sources of digital evidence, predicted to reach 29 billion connected devices by 2030, necessitating specialized forensic expertise to manage the vast data generated.\nTools like Velociraptor and Wireshark are essential for gathering evidence from cloud and IoT environments, helping investigators understand cybercriminal tactics and uncover crucial evidence.\n### Legal and Ethical Considerations\nLegal and ethical considerations are vital in digital forensics. Evidence must be handled to prevent tampering and ensure court admissibility. Data jurisdiction varies by location, complicating cloud data\u2019s legal considerations.\nInvestigating cloud-stored data is challenging due to varying data jurisdictions affecting legal access. Investigators must navigate these complexities while upholding ethical standards to maintain investigation integrity.\n## Trends in Digital Forensics\nTechnological advancements continuously transform digital forensics. Machine Learning, cloud, and IoT devices are expected to significantly impact the field, with ML enhancing data analysis to uncover hidden trends and connections in large data volumes.\nThere will be a heightened focus on database, network forensics, and mobile device forensics. Decision intelligence platforms are emerging as powerful tools to analyze large datasets, revealing crucial insights for forensic investigations.\n## How to Choose a Digital Forensics Solution\n- Selecting the right digital forensics solution is critical for successful investigations.\n- A reputable solution should have a strong presence in business and legal communities.\n- Positive references are essential when evaluating a digital forensics provider.\n- Key qualifications for professionals include education, certifications, and practical experience.\n- Experience in electronic discovery and cybersecurity consulting improves efficiency.\n- Digital Forensics as a Service (DFaaS) provides cloud-based forensic capabilities for advanced analysis.\n## Conclusion\nDigital forensics is an essential field in the modern world, playing a critical role in uncovering and analyzing digital evidence. From identifying potential sources of evidence to presenting findings in court, each phase of the digital forensics process is crucial for maintaining the integrity and authenticity of the evidence. By understanding the tools, techniques, and challenges involved, forensic professionals can effectively navigate the complexities of digital investigations and contribute to the resolution of cybercrimes and corporate audits.\n## Frequently Ask Questions\n### What are the 5 stages of digital forensics investigation?\nThe five stages of a digital forensics investigation are identification, preservation, analysis, documentation, and presentation. Following these stages ensures a thorough and effective examination of digital evidence.\n### What is digital forensics?\nDigital forensics is essential for investigating cybercrime, as it involves recovering and examining data from digital devices to uncover evidence. This discipline plays a critical role in enhancing cybersecurity and aiding law enforcement.\n### Why is digital forensics important?\nDigital forensics is crucial for addressing crimes involving digital technology and ensures that digital evidence is accurately presented in legal proceedings. This field plays a vital role in enhancing security and justice in our increasingly digital world.\n### Why are mobile devices critical to a digital forensics investigation?\nMobile devices are crucial in digital forensics because they often contain valuable evidence, such as text messages, call logs, app data, and location history. As mobile usage has become pervasive, these devices hold critical information in criminal investigations, cybersecurity incidents, and civil cases. Forensics experts can extract, analyze, and preserve data from mobile devices to build a comprehensive case.\n### What tools are used in digital forensics?\nDigital forensics employs a range of tools such as open-source options like The Sleuth Kit, commercial software like FTK Imager, and specialized hardware like X-Ways Forensics. These tools are essential for effective investigation and analysis of digital evidence.\n### What are the challenges in digital forensics?\nChallenges in digital forensics include managing encrypted data, dealing with the complexities of cloud and IoT environments, and ensuring compliance with legal and ethical standards. These factors can significantly complicate investigations and evidence collection."
  },
  {
    "Title": "What Is Digital Forensics? When IT Meets Criminal Justice",
    "URL": "https://www.amu.apus.edu/area-of-study/criminal-justice/resources/what-is-digital-forensics-in-criminal-justice/",
    "Query": "digital forensics investigation",
    "Content cleaned": "Yes (reduced from 15897 to 13848 chars)",
    "Content": "Digital technology has infiltrated nearly every aspect of modern society, and forensic investigations are no exception. Electronic devices have become integral to our jobs, communications, and even leisure activities.\nAs a result, we have collectively created a wealth of digital data. This data, also known as our digital footprints, serves as a record of everything we do on our tablets, desktop computers, smartphones, and other digital devices. It is generated from various activities such as conducting online searches and completing business transactions.\nNaturally, a digital footprint also contains evidence of an individual or organization\u2019s involvement in criminal activity. This digital evidence helps forensic investigators piece together clues surrounding both computer and non-computer crimes.\nDue to the sheer volume of electronic evidence investigators must comb through, however, law enforcement agencies employ entire teams dedicated to the field of digital forensics.\nThe U.S. Department of Homeland Security defines digital forensics as \u201cthe process of recovering and preserving material found on digital devices during the course of criminal investigations.\u201d Digital forensics is also known as computer forensics or cyber forensics.\nJust as traditional forensic investigators collect physical evidence from crime scenes, digital forensic investigators collect and analyze data from computers and other electronic devices.\n## What Is Digital Evidence?\nIf computer forensics is the process of collecting and analyzing digital forensic evidence, then what is this type of evidence? The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) notes that \u201cDigital evidence includes any information in binary form that can be useful in criminal or other legal investigations and proceedings. By its nature, digital evidence resides on physical media, but it is the content and related information, rather than the media, that are most often important.\u201d\nBased on this definition, electronics such as computers, tablets, and mobile devices are not technically electronic evidence. Rather, digital forensic evidence consists of the data contained within these electronic devices, such as cache data, cookies, and even deleted information.\n## Where Does Digital Forensic Evidence Come From?\nDigital investigations involve various forms of electronic data, which come from a broad range of sources. The NIST groups these sources into four categories:\n- **Physical media** \u2013Any tangible piece of technology that can store digital data \u2013 such as computers, tablets, smartphones, and flash drives \u2013 falls under this category.\n- **Digital images and files** \u2013 This category consists of digital copies of the data investigators collect from physical media and cloud-based systems.\n- **Other digital objects** \u2013 This category refers to online accounts and other digital content \u201cthat does not exist as an image or file,\u201d according to the NIST.\n- **Law enforcement-generated evidence** \u2013 Electronic records, including but not limited to in-car videos and footage from body-worn cameras, comprise this category.\n## What Does a Digital Forensics Analyst Do?\nSometimes referred to as digital forensics investigators or computer forensic analysts, digital forensics analysts play a key role in our justice system. They \u201cpreserve and present computer-related evidence in support of criminal, fraud, counterintelligence, or law enforcement investigations,\u201d as O\\*Net explains.\nUnsurprisingly, these professionals have a long list of duties. In addition to scouring files and data for useful evidence, digital forensic analysts must preserve and duplicate any electronic evidence they find.\nTheir role also requires them to create reports summarizing their findings. In certain cases, a digital forensic analyst may even need to give a deposition.\nAccording to O\\*Net, additional responsibilities for a digital forensic investigator may include:\n- Conducting predictive or reactive analyses on cyber security measures\n- Developing plans for investigating alleged digital crimes or other suspicious activities\n- Developing policies for data collection, processing, or reporting\n- Maintaining cyber defense software and hardware\n- Understanding the laws, regulations, policies, and other concerns regarding computer forensics and information privacy\n- Analyzing file signatures to verify files on storage media and discover potential hidden data\n- Writing and executing scripts to automate tasks, such as assessing large data files\nThe role of a digital forensics analyst is unique because it combines both computer science and law enforcement.\n## What Are the Different Specialty Areas in the Digital Forensics World?\nPerforming forensic data analysis means working with information technology in its many forms. Digital forensic science, accordingly, applies to several specialty areas:\n- **Mobile device forensics** \u2013 According to the NIST, classic computer forensics processes are insufficient for cases that require investigators to extract data from mobile phones. There are also specific digital forensic tools investigators use for collecting and analyzing digital data from mobile devices.\n- **Network forensics** \u2013 Forensic investigators identify cyber threats and investigate security breaches using network forensic techniques. NIST says, \u201cNetwork forensics is the science that deals with the capture, recording and analysis of network events and traffic for detecting intrusions and investigating them, which involves post-mortem investigation of the attack and is initiated after the attack has happened.\u201d\n- **Database forensics** \u2013 According to scholar Paul Reedy in a Forensic Science International: Synergy article, database forensics is a specialty area that \u201cfocuses on the detailed analysis of a database including its contents, log files, metadata, and data files.\u201d\n## Notable Organizations in the Computer Forensics Field\nThe world of digital forensics is a vast one. It includes a wide spectrum of professionals, from police detectives to forensic accountants, and spans both the public and private sectors.\nConsequently, there are several organizations that specialize in digital forensics and use digital forensic tools. In this type of organization, an investigator can track down suspected digital assets and recover deleted files from devices.\n### The National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force\nAccording to the FBI, the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF) actively protects our country from cyber threats. It includes over 30 agencies with roots in law enforcement, the Intelligence Community, and the Department of Defense (DoD).\n\u201cThe NCIJTF also synchronizes joint efforts that focus on identifying, pursuing, and defeating the actual terrorists, spies, and criminals who seek to exploit our nation\u2019s systems,\u201d notes the FBI.\n### The Internet Crime Complaint Center\nPreviously called the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC), the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a resource that connects to the public to the FBI. Through the IC3 website, users can report information to the FBI regarding cybercrimes. These reports not only aid FBI investigations, but they also allow the FBI to track trends and potential threats that could result in computer viruses and deleted files.\n### The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency\nThe Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It partners with public- and private-sector organizations \u201cand serves as the national hub for cybersecurity and communications information.\u201d\nAs a multifunctional agency, CISA prioritizes cybersecurity risk management and leads cyber incident responses to protect national security.\n### The US Department of Homeland Security\u2019s Cyber Crimes Center\nThe Cyber Crimes Center (C3) is part of the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) federal agency. It focuses on cybercrime activity within the HSI\u2019s jurisdiction. C3\u2019s mission has several components, as its website notes:\n- Maintaining awareness of advancements in computer technology and cyber processes\n- Employing new technologies to combat illicit activities and defend against potential threats\n- Divulging the latest trends, risks, procedures, investigative leads, and other findings with law enforcement organizations worldwide, other field offices, and intelligence agencies\n- Using the leading digital forensic techniques and investigative procedures to thwart cyber-related crime\n### The Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center\nThe DoD's Cyber Crime Center (DC3) partners with police, cybersecurity, and national security organizations. Its areas of expertise include cybersecurity and computer forensics, and the organization also operates its own Cyber Forensics Laboratory (CFL).\n## The Advantages and Disadvantages That Electronic Evidence Offers to an Active Criminal Investigation\nFor investigators and analysts, digital evidence offers multiple advantages and disadvantages. These advantages can make \u2013 or break \u2013 the prosecution of a case.\n### Advantages\nDigital evidence has become instrumental in solving myriad crimes. For example, investigators rely on electronic evidence in cyber-specific cases, such as those cases surrounding data breaches, hacks, and ransomware. Nonetheless, computer forensics plays an important role in solving non-computer crimes as well.\n\u201cDigital evidence can relate to many different types of crime, ranging from fraud to corporate crime and organized crime,\u201d says Dr. Jarrod Sadulski, a criminal justice professor at AMU\u2019s School of Security and Global Studies. \u201cIf preserved properly, digital evidence can help to strengthen a case, which can lead to a successful criminal prosecution.\u201d\n### Disadvantages\n\u201cA disadvantage of digital evidence is that it can be easily lost,\u201d observes Dr. Sadulski. \u201cForensic investigators must take proper precautions when collecting digital files to avoid losing or compromising important data.\u201d\nHowever, computer forensics teams are only one part of the equation. Hackers and other cyber criminals also pose a threat. \u201cCertain technologies can be accessed remotely, and evidence can be purposely erased,\u201d Sadulski notes.\n\u201cTo prevent this destruction of evidence, criminal investigators and crime scene personnel should use digital protective devices such as Faraday bags. These bags are designed to ensure that digital evidence cannot be accessed remotely,\u201d he adds.\nGiven this insight, it makes perfect sense for investigators to duplicate the files they work with.\n## Myths People Believe about Digital Forensics\nAs Dr. Sadulski explains, one of the biggest misconceptions about digital evidence is that it can cut down the time needed to solve a crime. \u201cUtilizing digital evidence takes time and is likely not going to solve crime quicker than other forms of evidence,\u201d he says.\nPeople also tend to mistakenly believe that police organizations can solve any crime that involves collecting and analyzing digital evidence. Unfortunately, this line of thinking fails to account for both encrypted data and the legal protections surrounding the search and seizure phase of an investigation.\n\u201cThe problem is that encryption involving electronic devices can be an obstacle for digital forensic experts. If an encryption key is needed, investigators may not be able to access a device or recover deleted files,\u201d notes Sadulski. \u201cIt is also important to point out that our electronic devices have Fourth Amendment protection.\u201d\n## The Future of Digital Forensic Investigations\n\u201cDigital forensics will likely remain at the forefront of criminal cases,\u201d Sadulski predicts. \u201cDigital evidence is commonly located on cell phones, computers, cloud technology, smart home technologies, and vehicle computer systems. As technology evolves, it is important that investigators continue to examine ways that evidence can be obtained from these technological advancements.\u201d\nDigital forensics tools will also continue to evolve out of necessity as technology continues advancing and the Internet of Things (IoT) expands. Moreover, digital forensics investigators will further solidify their roles within our criminal justice system as digital clues help close more cases."
  },
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    "Title": "[PDF] NIST.SP.800-61r3.pdf",
    "URL": "https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-61r3.pdf",
    "Query": "security incident handling",
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    "Content": "# NIST Special Publication 800 NIST SP 800-61r3\n# Incident Response Recommendations and Considerations for Cybersecurity Risk Management\nA CSF 2.0 Community Profile\n# Executive Summary\nIncident response is a critical part of cybersecurity risk management and should be integrated across organizational operations. All six NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 2.0 Functions play vital roles in incident response:\n\u2022 Govern, Identify, and Protect help organizations prevent some incidents, prepare to handle incidents that do occur, reduce the impact of those incidents, and improve incident response and cybersecurity risk management practices based on lessons learned from those incidents. Detect, Respond, and Recover help organizations discover, manage, prioritize, contain, eradicate, and recover from cybersecurity incidents, as well as perform incident reporting, notification, and other incident-related communications.\nMany individuals, teams, and third parties hold a wide variety of roles and responsibilities across all of the Functions that support an organization\u2019s incident response. Organizations have no direct control over the tactics and techniques used by their adversaries, nor are they certain about the timing of a future incident other than knowing that another incident is inevitable. However, organizations can use an incident response life cycle framework or model that best suits them to develop strong cybersecurity risk management practices that reduce their risks to acceptable levels.\nThis publication uses the CSF 2.0 Functions, Categories, and Subcategories to organize its recommendations, considerations, and other information regarding incident response as a CSF 2.0 Community Profile. Doing so provides a common taxonomy that is already widely used for communicating about incident response and cybersecurity risk management and governance. This also enables organizations to access a range of online resources mapped to each Function, Category, and Subcategory through the NIST Cybersecurity and Privacy Reference Tool (CPRT). These resources include mappings to other incident response and cybersecurity risk management standards and guidance, as well as sources of implementation guidance that organizations can choose to utilize as needed.\nOrganizations should use the incident response life cycle framework or model that suits them best. The model in this document is based on CSF 2.0 to take advantage of the wealth of resources available for CSF 2.0 and aid organizations that are already using the CSF. Regardless of the incident response life cycle framework or model used, every organization should take incident response into consideration throughout their cybersecurity risk management activities.\n# 1\\. Introduction\nWithin this document, an event is any observable occurrence that involves computing assets, including physical and virtual platforms, networks, services, and cloud environments. Examples of events are user login attempts, the installation of software updates, and an application responding to a transaction request. Many events focus on security or have security implications. Adverse events are any events associated with a negative consequence regardless of cause, including natural disasters, power failures, or cybersecurity attacks. This guide addresses only adverse cybersecurity events. Additional analysis is often needed to determine whether adverse cybersecurity events indicate that a cybersecurity incident has occurred.\nA cybersecurity incident (or simply incident) is \u2026an occurrence that actually or imminently jeopardizes, without lawful authority, the integrity, confidentiality, or availability of information or an information system; or constitutes a violation or imminent threat of violation of law, security policies, security procedures, or acceptable use policies. \\[FISMA2014\\]\nExamples of incidents include an attacker:\n\u2022 Employing a botnet to send high volumes of connection requests to an internet-facing service, making it unavailable to legitimate service users Obtaining administrative credentials at a software-as-a-service provider, which puts sensitive tenant data entrusted to that provider at risk Intruding upon an organization\u2019s business network to steal credentials and use them to instruct industrial control systems to shut down or destroy critical physical components, causing a major service disruption Deploying ransomware to prevent the use of computer systems and cause multiple data breaches by copying files from those systems Using phishing emails to compromise user accounts and using those accounts to commit financial fraud\nIdentifying a new vulnerability in network management appliances and exploiting the vulnerability to gain unauthorized access to network communications\nCompromising a vendor\u2019s software, which is subsequently distributed to customers in its compromised state\nBecause of the damage that cybersecurity incidents can inflict on organizations and their customers, business partners, and others, it is vital to respond quickly and effectively when an incident occurs. Effective implementation of incident response processes enables systematic responses to and recovery from incidents by analyzing information and taking appropriate action. This reduces cybersecurity and enterprise risks by minimizing data loss or theft, the disruption of services, and the overall impact of incidents. Lessons learned from incident response activities and root cause analysis help improve cybersecurity risk management and governance efforts and ensure that the organization is better prepared to identify its current technology assets and cybersecurity risks, protect its assets, and detect, respond to, and recover from future incidents.\n# 1.1. Purpose and Scope\nThis publication seeks to help organizations incorporate cybersecurity incident response recommendations and considerations throughout their cybersecurity risk management activities. It also provides a common language that all organizations can use to communicate internally and externally regarding their incident response plans and activities.\nThe scope of this publication differs significantly from previous versions. Because the details of how to perform incident response activities change so often and vary so much across technologies, environments, and organizations, it is no longer feasible to capture and maintain that information in a single static publication. Instead, this version focuses on improving cybersecurity risk management for all of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 2.0 Functions \\[CSF2.0\\] to better support an organization\u2019s incident response capabilities.\nReaders are encouraged to utilize other NIST resources in conjunction with this document, including the CSF 2.0 publication and supplemental resources, the Incident Response project page, and mappings to additional sources of information on implementing incident response considerations available through the NIST Cybersecurity and Privacy Reference Tool (CPRT). An example of a CPRT mapping is associating CSF 2.0 outcomes with NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-53 controls that can be implemented to help achieve the outcomes. In this way, CSF 2.0 provides a common language that facilitates access to a large number of other resources.\nThis publication supersedes SP 800-61r2 (Revision 2), Computer Security Incident Handling Guide \\[SP800-61r2\\].\n# 1.2. Document Structure\nThe remainder of this document is organized into the following sections and appendices:\n\u2022 Section 2 discusses how incident response has evolved to become a critical part of cybersecurity risk management, as well as how the concept of the incident response life cycle has changed to reflect that. Section 3 presents incident response recommendations and considerations for an organization\u2019s cybersecurity risk management practices. They are organized and documented as a CSF 2.0 Community Profile.\n\u2022 The References section lists references cited throughout this publication.\n\u2022 Appendix A and Appendix B provide an acronyms list and a glossary, respectively. Appendix C contains a change log of the major changes made since the previous revision.\n# 2\\. Incident Response as Part of Cybersecurity Risk Management\nThis section explains the fundamental concepts of incident response as an integral part of cybersecurity risk management. Section 2.1 explores the incident response life cycle and proposes a new life cycle model based on CSF 2.0 Functions. Section 2.2 discusses incident response roles and responsibilities both inside and outside an organization. Finally, Section 2.3 briefly examines incident response policies, processes, and procedures.\n# 2.1. Incident Response Life Cycle Model\nFig. 1 depicts the incident response life cycle model illustrated in the previous version of this publication \\[SP800-61r2\\].\nAt that time, incidents were relatively rare, the scope of most incidents was narrow and welldefined, and incident response and recovery was usually completed within a day or two. Under those conditions, it was realistic to treat incident response as a separate set of activities performed by a separate team of personnel and to depict all incident response activities as part of a circular life cycle. Formal post-incident activities would identify needed improvements and feed them into the preparation stage, thus starting the cycle again. Incident response activities were typically intermittent rather than continuous.\nHowever, the current state of incident response has greatly changed since then. Today, incidents occur frequently and cause far more damage. Recovering from them often takes weeks or months due to their breadth, complexity, and dynamic nature. Incident response is now considered a critical part of cybersecurity risk management that should be integrated across organizational operations. The lessons learned during incident response should often be shared as soon as they are identified, not delayed until after recovery concludes. Continuous improvement is increasingly necessary for all facets of cybersecurity risk management in order to keep up with modern threats.\nFig. 2 shows a high-level incident response life cycle model based on the six CSF 2.0 Functions, which organize cybersecurity outcomes at their highest level:\nGovern (GV): The organization\u2019s cybersecurity risk management strategy, expectations, and policy are established, communicated, and monitored. Identify (ID): The organization\u2019s current cybersecurity risks are understood. Protect (PR): Safeguards to manage the organization\u2019s cybersecurity risks are used. Detect (DE): Possible cybersecurity attacks and compromises are found and analyzed.\n\u2022 Respond (RS): Actions regarding a detected cybersecurity incident are taken.\n\u2022 Recover (RC): Assets and operations affected by a cybersecurity incident are restored.\nAll six Functions have vital roles in incident response. Govern, Identify, and Protect help organizations prevent some incidents, prepare to handle incidents that do occur, reduce the impact of those incidents, and improve incident response and cybersecurity risk management practices based on lessons learned. Detect, Respond, and Recover help organizations discover, manage, prioritize, contain, eradicate, and recover from cybersecurity incidents, as well as perform incident reporting, notification, and other incident-related communications.\nThe bottom level reflects that the preparation activities of Govern, Identify, and Protect are not part of the incident response itself. Rather, they are much broader cybersecurity risk management activities that also support incident response. Incident response is shown in the top level of the figure: Detect, Respond, and Recover. Additionally, the need for continuous improvement is indicated as the middle level with the Improvement Category (ID.IM) within the Identify Function and the dashed green lines. Lessons learned from performing all activities in all Functions are fed into Improvement, and those lessons are analyzed, prioritized, and used to inform all of the Functions. This reflects that organizations can learn new lessons at all times\n(e.g., detecting the presence of a new threat and characterizing its behavior) and communicate those lessons to the appropriate personnel so that the organization\u2019s incident response and other cybersecurity risk management policies, processes, and practices can be adjusted as needed.\nTable 1 maps the previous SP 800-61 incident response life cycle model\u2019s phases to the corresponding CSF 2.0 Functions used in this document.\nOrganizations should use the incident response life cycle framework or model that suits them best. The model in this document is based on CSF 2.0 to take advantage of the wealth of resources available for CSF 2.0 and aid organizations that are already using the CSF. The appropriate incident response life cycle framework or model for an organization depends on many factors; for example, larger and more technology-dependent organizations are likely to benefit more from using a framework or model emphasizing continuous improvement than other organizations would. Regardless of the incident response life cycle framework or model used, every organization should take incident response into consideration throughout their cybersecurity risk management activities.\n# 2.2. Incident Response Roles and Responsibilities\nIn the past, incident response activities were performed almost exclusively by incident handlers from the organization\u2019s own incident response team. Today, while incident handlers are still critically important, most organizations increasingly recognize that the success of their incident response efforts depend on the participation of many internal and external parties who hold a wide variety of roles and responsibilities and may be spread around the world. Roles and responsibilities will differ for each organization and may also differ within an organization based on the nature of a particular incident.\nExamples of incident response roles and responsibilities include the following:\nLeadership. The organization\u2019s leadership team oversees incident response, allocates funding, and may have decision-making authority on high-impact response actions, such as shutting down or rebuilding critical services.\nIncident handlers. Incident handlers verify that an incident has occurred, collect and analyze data and evidence, prioritize incident response activities, and act appropriately to limit damage, find root causes, and restore operations. Incident handlers also often provide input to others on mitigating cybersecurity issues and improving resiliency. An organization\u2019s incident handlers might be:\no On staff (e.g., an incident response team),\no On contract (e.g., outsourcing a security operations center \\[SOC\\] to a managed security services provider \\[MSSP\\] or leveraging a cloud service provider\u2019s incident response team when an incident occurs within that provider\u2019s cloud), and/or\no Available when needed (e.g., from a parent organization, a cybersecurity service provider, a business partner, or a law enforcement agency).\nMany organizations may use more than one of these approaches, such as internally performing basic incident response and engaging third-party resources for assistance with certain incidents. Larger organizations may have multiple incident response teams, with each team responsible for a particular logical or physical segment of the organization. When this model is employed, the teams should be part of a single coordinated entity (e.g., a federation) to ensure that incident response processes, procedures, and training are consistent across the organization and that information is shared among teams.\nTechnology professionals. Cybersecurity, privacy, system, network, cloud, and other technology architects, engineers, and administrators, as well as software developers, may be involved in incident response and recovery efforts.\nLegal. Legal experts can review incident response plans, policies, and procedures to ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations, including the right to privacy. Legal experts can also review contracts with technology suppliers and other third parties when there are incident response implications. In addition, incident responders can seek guidance from their organization\u2019s legal department if a particular incident may have legal ramifications, such as the prosecution of a suspect, lawsuits, or situations that require a memorandum of understanding (MOU) or other binding agreement.\n\u2022 Public affairs and media relations. Depending on the nature and impact of an incident, it may be necessary to inform the media and, by extension, the public. Sometimes, the media learns of incidents through alternate sources (i.e., not through public affairs personnel). Having a media engagement strategy in place can greatly aid in this situation.\nHuman resources. Certain human resources practices should consider cybersecurity risk management, including pre-employment screening and employee onboarding, offboarding, and position changes. Human resources may also be involved if an employee is suspected of intentionally causing an incident. Physical security and facilities management. Some computer security incidents occur through physical security breaches or involve coordinated logical and physical attacks. The incident response team may also need access to facilities during incident handling (e.g., to access a compromised workstation in a locked office).\n\u2022 Asset owners. Asset owners (e.g., system owners, data owners, and business process owners) may have valuable insights on response and recovery priorities for their affected assets. They also need to be kept up to date on the status of response and recovery efforts.\nThird parties may be under contract with an organization to help perform incident response activities. Some third parties may fill a primary role (e.g., an MSSP performing incident detection, response, and recovery activities), while other parties (e.g., cloud service providers \\[CSPs\\] and internet service providers \\[ISPs\\]) may be involved in certain incident response activities for particular types of incidents. This is a shared responsibility model in which the organization transfers some of its responsibilities to a provider. These responsibilities should be clearly defined in a contract, and the incident response team should be aware of the division of responsibilities, including information flows, coordination, and authority to act on behalf of the organization. This also includes restrictions on what the service provider can do, such as sharing sanitized incident information with other customers or making and implementing operational decisions (e.g., immediately deactivating certain services to contain an incident).\nA service provider may detect malicious activity sooner than individual organizations would because it can correlate events across its customers. In some situations, a service provider might be able to use knowledge of an incident with one customer to proactively prevent similar incidents with its other customers. Service providers often have privileged access to organizational systems and may also have access to sensitive organizational data. Accordingly, the risk of malicious insiders or the service provider being compromised should be considered and addressed. Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and contracting clauses are options for deterring the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive data.\n# 2.3. Incident Response Policies, Processes, and Procedures\nOrganizations should have policies that govern their cybersecurity incident response. While a policy is highly individualized to the organization, most incident response policies include the same key elements:\nStatement of management commitment\n\u00b7 Purpose and objectives of the policy\n\u2022 Scope of the policy (i.e., to whom and what it applies and under what circumstances)\nNIST SP 800-61r3\nApril 2025\n\u2022 Definition of events, cybersecurity incidents, investigations, and related terms Roles, responsibilities, and authorities, such as which roles have the authority to confiscate, disconnect, or shut down technology assets Guidelines for prioritizing incidents, estimating their severity, initiating recovery processes, maintaining or restoring operations, and other key actions\n\u2022 Performance measures\nProcesses and procedures should be based on the incident response policy and plan. Documented procedures should explain how technical processes and other operating procedures should be performed. Procedures can be tested or exercised periodically to verify their accuracy and can be used to help train new personnel. While it is impossible to have detailed procedures for every possible situation, organizations should consider documenting procedures for responding to the most common types of incidents and threats. Organizations should also develop and maintain procedures for particularly important processes that may be urgently needed during emergency situations, such as redeploying the organization\u2019s primary authentication platform.\nMany organizations choose to create playbooks as part of documenting their procedures. Playbooks provide actionable steps or tasks for people to perform during various scenarios or situations. Formatting procedures within a playbook instead of another format can improve their usability. See the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Cybersecurity Incident & Vulnerability Response Playbooks \\[CISA-PB\\] for incident response playbook examples.\n# 3\\. CSF 2.0 Community Profile for Cyber Incident Risk Management\nA CSF Community Profile is a baseline of CSF outcomes that is created and published to address shared interests and goals for reducing cybersecurity risk among a number of organizations. A Community Profile is typically developed for a particular sector, subsector, technology, threat type, or other use case \\[CSF2.0\\].\nThis section defines NIST\u2019s CSF 2.0 Community Profile for cyber incident risk management. It uses the CSF Core as the basis for highlighting and prioritizing cybersecurity outcomes that are important for incident response, makes recommendations, and provides other supporting information for certain CSF outcomes within the context of incident response \\[CSWP32\\]. The Community Profile is split into two tables: Table 2 covers Preparation (Govern, Identify, and Protect) and Lessons Learned (Identify-Improvement), while Table 3 covers Incident Response (Detect, Respond, and Recover).\nEach CSF 2.0 Function, Category, and Subcategory has its own row in one of the two tables. Each row\u2019s relative priority within the context of incident response is indicated by one of the following:\nHigh: Functions as a core incident response activity for most organizations \u00b7 Medium: Directly supports incident response activities for most organizations \u2022 Low: Indirectly supports incident response activities for most organizations\nThese priorities are intended as a starting point for organizations, who are encouraged to customize this Community Profile to reflect their own priorities and needs.\nThe last column may contain one or more items that recommend what to do or describe additional considerations or supporting information for some rows. Each item in that column has an ID starting with one of the following:\n\u2022 ${}^{\\\\prime\\\\prime}{\\\\mathsf{R}}^{\\\\prime\\\\prime}$ (recommendation: something the organization should do) \u2022 ${}^{\\\\prime\\\\prime}{\\\\mathsf{C}}^{\\\\prime\\\\prime}$ (consideration: something the organization should consider doing) \u2022 \u201cN\u201d (note: additional information besides recommendations and considerations)\nAn R, C, or N designation and its number can be appended to the row\u2019s CSF ID to create an identifier that is unique within the Community Profile (e.g., \u201cGV.OC-03.R1\u201d is recommendation 1 for CSF Subcategory GV.OC-03).\nRecommendations, considerations, and notes made at a higher level of the CSF (Function or Category) also apply to their component elements (Categories or Subcategories).\nThe recommendations, considerations, and notes supplement what the CSF 2.0 already provides through its documents and online resources. The recommendations, considerations, and notes are not comprehensive, and not all of them will be applicable to every organization. Technologies mentioned in recommendations, considerations, and notes are examples as of this writing and may become outdated.\nSome recommendations, considerations, and notes use terms that are not defined in this publication (e.g., \u201cdata breach\u201d). Organizations that adopt the Community Profile should define these terms in the context of their own environments, use cases, and applicable laws and regulations. Readers may also choose to consult NIST\u2019s glossary, which contains an aggregation of terms and definitions from numerous NIST standards, guidelines, and other publications.\nThe Community Profile is intended for use by most organizations, regardless of sector, size, or other factors. Additional versions of this Community Profile could be developed for narrower audiences, such as federal agencies, small businesses, or educational institutions. For more information on CSF 2.0 Community Profiles, see the Framework Resource Center.\n# 3.1. Preparation and Lessons Learned\nTable 2 contains the first part of the Community Profile: Preparation and Lessons Learned, which both support the Incident Response part of the Community Profile defined in Table 3.\nNote: Most of the CSF elements in this part of the Profile are not specific to executing incident response activities, so they have lower priorities with respect to incident response and do not contain recommendations or considerations. This does not imply that they are unnecessary for organizations to achieve, but rather that they are outside of the direct scope of responding to incidents.\nNIST SP 800-61r3 April 2025\nNIST SP 800-61r3 April 2025\nNIST SP 800-61r3 April 2025\nNIST SP 800-61r3 April 2025\nNIST SP 800-61r3 April 2025\nNIST SP 800-61r3 April 2025\nNIST SP 800-61r3 April 2025\nIncident Response Recommendations and Considerations for Cyber Risk Management\n# 3.2. Incident Response\nTable 3 contains the second part of the Community Profile: Incident Response.\nNote: All of the CSF elements in this part of the Profile are specific to responding to incidents, so they have higher priorities with respect to incident response than those in the first part. Accordingly, all CSF elements in this part have recommendations or considerations.\nNIST SP 800-61r3 April 2025\nNIST SP 800-61r3 April 2025\nNIST SP 800-61r3 April 2025\nNIST SP 800-61r3 April 2025\nNIST SP 800-61r3 April 2025\nNIST SP 800-61r3 April 2025\nNIST SP 800-61r3 April 2025\nNIST SP 800-61r3 April 2025"
  },
  {
    "Title": "Understanding OT Cyber Threat Intelligence | Dragos",
    "URL": "https://www.dragos.com/blog/what-is-ot-cyber-threat-intelligence/",
    "Query": "cyber threat intelligence",
    "Content cleaned": "Yes (reduced from 16512 to 13679 chars)",
    "Content": "**Dragos is an industrial cybersecurity company leveraging software, intelligence, and professional services to safeguard civilization. The SANS Institute empowers cybersecurity professionals with high quality training, certifications, degree programs, and more to help them make the world a safer place. Together, we have created a blog series about OT cybersecurity fundamentals, crafted for practitioners and executives alike to gain a better understanding of operational environments and their unique security requirements. This is the fourth blog in our series.**\nCyber threat intelligence (CTI) involves collection, processing, analysis, dissemination, and integration of information about active or emerging cyber threats. The primary purpose of CTI is to uncover malicious cyber activities and adversaries and make this knowledge available to decision-making functions in the organization. Operational technology (OT) cyber threat intelligence addresses the unique challenges and requirements of OT environments. These systems are integral to critical infrastructure such as power plants, manufacturing facilities, gas pipelines, and water treatment plants.\nThis blog will examine the unique challenges and specific requirements for securing OT environments, highlighting the critical role of specialized cyber threat intelligence in safeguarding these systems.\n#### Get Insights into Threats Affecting Industrial Infrastructure\nEnhance your operational technology (OT) security with Dragos WorldView, the leading solution for OT cyber threat intelligence.\nRequest a WorldView Demo\n## The Domain of OT Cyber Threat Intelligence\nOT Cyber Threat Intelligence is critical to safeguarding the systems that control physical processes. OT cyber threat intelligence involves proactively identifying threats that could alter, degrade, or disrupt\u00a0physical processes and launching a defense against these threats before they lead to potentially dangerous outcomes. This is distinctly different from IT cyber threat intelligence which involves identifying and subverting cyber threats that aim to steal, corrupt, or exploit information.\n## Threat Intelligence Cycle for OT Environments\nIn the context of OT-specific cyber threat intelligence, the intelligence cycle and the relationship between data, information, and intelligence are intricately connected. The intelligence cycle, consisting of Planning and Direction, Collection, Processing and Exploitation, Analysis and Production, and Dissemination and Integration, is designed to transform raw data from OT environments into actionable intelligence.\nThis process begins with collecting data from the operational environment, which includes signals specific to OT systems and network traffic. This raw data is then processed to create meaningful information, which is analyzed through the lens of risks in OT environment to produce intelligence. The intelligence cycle ensures that this intelligence is not only accurate and relevant but also effectively integrated into the organization\u2019s security operations, providing actionable insights that inform decision-making and enhance the protection of critical infrastructure.\n## OT Cyber Threat Scenarios\nAttacks on operational technology networks and industrial control systems (ICS) can impact essential services like electricity, oil and gas, manufacturing, and water. The following threat events and incidents illustrate the types of cyber activities and adversaries that impact industrial environments. These scenarios underscore the need for specialized OT cyber threat intelligence to protect against attacks with severe real-world consequences.\n|     |     |\n| --- | --- |\n| **2015-2016 Ukraine Electric Grid Attacks** | In 2015, an attack on a Ukraine electric entity was distributed via an email as a Word document or PowerPoint attachment, luring victims into clicking the seemingly legitimate file. BLACKENERGY3 was deployed to enable a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) that disrupted electric services for several hours. In 2016, the CRASHOVERRIDE malware was deployed against a Ukraine energy entity, targeting hundreds of systems. The malware aimed to disable control and SCADA systems and launch a denial-of-service (DoS) attack on protective relays to create hazardous conditions. This incident marks the first known use of malicious code designed to target electric substations. |\n| **2017 TRISIS Attack on Petrochemical Safety Systems** | The TRISIS malware was deployed against a safety instrumentation system (SIS) at a petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia. The attackers attempted to disable safety features. However, the attack tripped safety systems that would shut down the plant. It represents the first time that safety features of a system have been targeted and compromised directly. |\n| **2022 Emergence of the Cross-Industry OT Toolkit PIPEDREAM** | PIPEDREAM is a multi-tool malware. It targets specific Omron and Schneider Electric controllers, causing loss of view, control, and safety. It also manipulates OPC-UA connections and targets Windows systems, making it capable of an end-to-end attack. Unlike previous examples, which were designed to target a single OT environment, PIPEDREAM can be used in multiple industrial sectors and adapted for thousands of CODESYS devices. Fortunately, the malware was discovered before it was employed. It represents the first cross-industry OT attack toolkit. |\n| **2023-2024 Hacktivist Attacks Impacting Water Utilities** | Several self-proclaimed hacktivist groups successfully compromised water utilities throughout the United States, Europe, and Australia. Internet-exposed PLCs were targeted, easily discoverable in Shodan searches, and in some cases, compromised using only the default password for the devices targeted. Other techniques used were relatively unsophisticated. The attacks led to material impacts and disruption in a few locations, underscoring the importance of taking basic security precautions. |\n## Cyber Adversaries Targeting OT Environments\nThe many adversaries targeting operational technology environments and industrial control systems are motivated by different factors. Industrial organizations might encounter:\n- State actors motivated by state objectives and that receive direction and support based on that alignment. These groups seek a strategic advantage by collecting information or pre-positioning for an attack later.\n- Hacktivist groups with many different social and political motivations. They generally seek to advance a specific agenda, but their actions are sometimes inconsistent and misleading.\n- Financially motivated cybercriminals. Ransomware groups are prime examples. They want a payoff by whatever means.\nCyber adversaries targeting industrial organizations and control systems can be informally classified according to their intent, capabilities, familiarity with industrial processes, and impacts.\n|     |     |\n| --- | --- |\n| Adversaries that can cause **DIRECT** OT impact | These adversaries directly impact the operation of industrial control systems and have the potential to disrupt, degrade, or destroy operational technology systems. |\n| Adversaries that can **FACILITATE** direct OT impact | Some adversaries are interested in industrial organizations, industrial control systems, and operational technology networks for reconnaissance and initial access activities. |\n| Adversaries that can cause **INDIRECT** OT impact | Some adversaries targeting IT may indirectly disrupt operational technology environments, such as ransomware attacks that disrupt OT systems during preventative/precautionary shutdowns or adversaries that disrupt availability of IT systems needed for OT processes, absent of intent. |\nWhile this is not an exhaustive categorization of adversaries, it is a helpful rubric for understanding the varied intentions and impacts encountered in OT cyber threat intelligence.\nWhen securing operational technology networks, industrial organizations should focus on adversaries conducting sustained operations that are defensible and focused on industrial.\n## Vulnerabilities in OT Environments\nUsing an IT mindset when addressing OT vulnerabilities is wrong. Industrial infrastructure operates specialized machinery with longer lifecycles than IT equipment. It is heavily engineered to fulfill the core business functions\u2014producing electricity, manufacturing products, distributing oil and gas, and treating water. However, most vulnerability disclosures are written with IT in mind and don\u2019t correctly characterize the risks to OT. When prioritizing vulnerabilities in OT, it\u2019s essential first to research and consider factors such as:\n- **Severity** \u2013 What capabilities does this vulnerability provide adversaries?\n- **OT impact** \u2013 What could happen in the OT environment?\n- **Network exploitability** \u2013 Can it be reached from the network?\n- **Ease of exploitation** \u2013 How skilled must an adversary be to use it?\n- **Events in the wild** \u2013 Are adversaries already using it?\nKnowing why and when to address vulnerabilities is the starting point. Then, it is a matter of determining what to do. Patch recommendations are standard, which is impractical in continuously running operations. To be effective, vulnerability management in industrial environments requires alternatives to patching and accurate risk information.\n## Key Frameworks for OT Cybersecurity Threats\nUnderstanding where an adversary is in their campaign, their capabilities, and the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that form their attack enables defenders to make better-informed security and risk management decisions.\nFrameworks such as the ICS Cyber Kill Chain and MITRE ATT&CK\u00ae for ICS are invaluable tools for OT cyber threat intelligence professionals. These OT-specific frameworks help organizations anticipate, detect, and mitigate threats effectively for the safety and continuity of their operations.\n|     |     |\n| --- | --- |\n| **ICS Cyber Kill Chain** | The ICS Cyber Kill Chain represents the entirety of the operation against an organization and its systems.Stage 1 of the ICS Cyber Kill Chain traditionally involves espionage operations, often to gain access to the information within networks and learn the system. Stage 2 consists of using the knowledge gained in Stage 1 to develop, test, and deploy a capability that can meaningfully attack OT. |\n| **MITRE ATT&CK for ICS** | MITRE ATT&CK\u00ae for ICS is a comprehensive knowledge base of cyber adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) explicitly targeting industrial control systems. MITRE ATT&CK\u00ae for ICS details the various stages, from initial access and execution to impact, mapping out the specific threats and attack vectors relevant to ICS environments. |\n## OT Cyber Threat Intelligence Data Sources\nIndustrial organizations rely on multiple data sources to form a comprehensive understanding of cyber threats:\n- **Internal IT Data:** Can help identify potential threats before they affect OT environments but is not sufficient alone.\n- **OT-Native Network Monitoring:** Essential for knowledge of threats within OT systems. Technologies like the Dragos Platform are critical for this task.\n- **Collaboration with Partners:** Sharing first-party data through agreements and networks like Neighborhood Keeper enhances visibility and detection capabilities.\n- **External Sources:** Commercial CTI providers like WorldView, ISACs, and regulatory agencies provide a broader context and sector-specific intelligence.\n## In Conclusion\nUnderstanding and effectively managing cyber threats facing OT environments is essential. Unlike IT systems, OT environments are directly tied to the physical world, meaning that any disruption can lead to significant physical consequences such as production downtime, equipment damage, and even risks to human safety and the environment.\nOT cyber threat intelligence involves understanding, identifying, and responding to distinct adversaries who often employ different threat behaviors and capabilities than those targeting IT systems. Moreover, OT vulnerabilities must be managed differently using tailored mitigations that reflect industrial systems\u2019 business requirements and operational challenges.\nOrganizations can proactively protect their critical infrastructure by leveraging OT-specific threat intelligence, ensuring operational continuity, safety, and security."
  },
  {
    "Title": "What are the Types of Cyberthreat Intelligence (CTI)?",
    "URL": "https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cyberpedia/types-of-cyberthreat-intelligence",
    "Query": "cyber threat intelligence",
    "Content cleaned": "Yes (reduced from 25117 to 17558 chars)",
    "Content": "Threats\n# What are the Types of Cyberthreat Intelligence (CTI)?\nThe three main types of cyberthreat intelligence are:\n1. **Strategic Threat Intelligence** \\- an executive-level intelligence that gives an overall view of the threat landscape, including threat actors, their capabilities, motivations, and attack trends. It enables organizations to make informed security decisions.\n2. **Tactical Threat Intelligence** \\- helps detect threats in networks by analyzing indicators like IP addresses, file hashes, and domains.\n****Operational Threat Intelligence** \\- real-time monitoring of networks and systems to identify vulnerabilities and threats. Analysts and responders use this intelligence to detect and respond to cyberthreats quickly.**\nThe critical difference between these is the level of detail and type of consumption. Strategic intelligence paints the overall picture, while tactical and operational intelligence provide more detailed, actionable data that security teams can operationalize within their specific environments. All three work together to enable organizations to understand and defend against complex cyberthreats.\n## What is Cyberthreat Intelligence?\nCyberthreat intelligence (CTI) is an aspect of cybersecurity that involves collecting, analyzing, and sharing information about potential and current cyberthreats and threat actors. It aims to provide organizations with a deep understanding of cyberattack risks, enabling them to prepare and respond effectively.\nCTI includes a variety of intelligence, such as:\n- tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by attackers\n- indicators of compromise (IoCs) that suggest an attack is underway\n- contextual details like the motives and capabilities of the adversaries\nThis intelligence is not static; it evolves as cyberthreats and technologies develop, requiring constant updating and refinement. By harnessing CTI, organizations can transition from reactive to proactive defense, staying one step ahead of cybercriminals.\n## What is Strategic Threat Intelligence?\nStrategic threat intel focuses on the broad threat landscape, covering major threat actors, campaigns, cybercrime/espionage trends, and future risks. It looks at \"the big picture\". Strategic assessments often leverage open-source intelligence including academic studies, news reports, conferences, and expert analysis.\nStrategic intel reports contain high-level assessments, background, motivation assessments, and strategic security recommendations. Intel looks further ahead, focusing on long-term risks, emerging adversaries, geopolitical factors, etc. Reports are meant primarily for senior leadership, such as CISOs, security executives, and risk managers, to inform high-level decisions.\n### Stakeholders and Communication\nLeaders in the C-suite, board members, and IT management need to know how cyberthreats can impact their organization's strategic decisions, risk management, and resource allocation. Strategic intelligence is communicated in a way that is easy to understand and comprehensive without using technical terms that non-technical leaders may not be familiar with. This helps leaders apply the intelligence to policy and strategy.\n### Long-term Risks and Business Implications\nLooking beyond immediate threats, Strategic threat intelligence considers the long-term risks that may affect an organization's ability to operate or compete. This might include assessing the impact of a changing regulatory landscape, the potential for targeted attacks from nation-states, or the risks posed by evolving technologies like quantum computing or AI. As a result, businesses can better prepare for future challenges by guiding investments in security infrastructure, shaping incident response planning, and informing company-wide security policies.\n## What is Tactical Threat Intelligence?\nTactical threat intelligence is information that helps security teams detect and respond to threats inside their environments. It focuses on current threats and provides data on emerging campaigns, new attacker infrastructure, and prevalent malware variants. Tactical intelligence complements strategic intelligence, which is more geared towards longer-term risks and decision-making.\nTactical intelligence is all about identifying specific indicators of compromise (IOCs) such as file hashes, domain names, and IP addresses. These IOCs are used by known attackers and can be searched for to identify breach activity. Security teams use IOCs to support activities like threat hunting, incident response, forensic analysis, network analytics, and measuring risk exposure.\nDetailed information on attackers' tools, behaviors, and infrastructure can help security teams deploy new defenses, perform investigations, manage vulnerabilities, rotate credentials, and more. It enables security teams to configure controls and sensors to detect threats, scan for evidence of compromise, suspend malicious accounts, block communications with C2 servers, and take other necessary actions.\nTactical intelligence is crucial as it helps teams keep up with the rapidly changing threat landscape and enables security measures to be as current as possible. By using this information, security teams can update firewalls, enhance security protocols, and train personnel to recognize and mitigate these threats.\n## What is Operational Threat Intelligence?\nOperational intelligence is intended to identify characteristic attack vectors and patterns of behavior to proactively identify the likely precursors of an impending attack. Operational intelligence is concerned with real-time monitoring of the \"When\" \"Where\" and \"How\" of an offensive operation and requires an understanding of an adversary's capabilities and of a target's exposure.\nKey aspects of Operational Threat Intelligence that organizations should be aware of include the following.\n### Real-Time or Near Real-Time Information\nOperational threat intelligence needs up-to-date information on active threats, like ongoing cyberattacks, current exploit trends, or newly discovered vulnerabilities.\n### Actionable Intelligence\nThis type of intelligence provides specific details that enable organizations to take immediate action. For example, it may include indicators of compromise (IoCs), such as specific malware signatures, IP addresses, URLs, or tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by threat actors.\n### Contextual Relevance\nThe intelligence must be relevant to the organization\u2019s specific environment, assets, and risk profile. It should help security teams understand how a particular threat could impact their systems and operations.\n### Integration with Security Tools\nOperational threat intelligence is often integrated into security tools such as intrusion detection systems, security information and event management (SIEM) systems, and endpoint protection platforms. This integration allows for automated responses to threats.\n### Support for Incident Response\nIt aids in the rapid response to security incidents by providing information that helps in understanding the nature of the attack, the attacker's identity or motivation, and the best methods for remediation and recovery.\n### Collaboration and Sharing\nOperational intelligence is most effective when it is shared. Sharing threat intelligence with peers, industry groups, or government entities allows for a broader understanding of threats and coordinated defense strategies.\n### Detailed Insights\nIncident response teams can achieve significant benefits by obtaining detailed insights into specific threats. Operational threat intel allows them to personalize their response instead of relying on generic strategies. Security professionals use this type of intelligence to improve their defensive tactics and to guide the development of more sophisticated and targeted security measures. It empowers organizations to shift from a reactive security stance to a more proactive one, where threats are countered with greater precision and effectiveness.\n## Application of Cyberthreat Intelligence\nOne key component of effective CTI is the sharing of information between organizations and within various departments of a single organization. Best practices in CTI involve collecting and analyzing data, and contributing to and learning from the broader security community.\n### Tools and Platforms for CTI Analysis\nVarious specialized tools and platforms are available to assist with the collection and analysis of threat intelligence. These tools range from advanced malware analysis systems to comprehensive threat intelligence platforms that aggregate and correlate data from multiple sources.\n### Automation and Artificial Intelligence in CTI\nThe use of automation and artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly prevalent in CTI. These technologies can process vast amounts of data at high speeds, uncover patterns that might elude human analysts, and predict future attacks based on current trends.\n## Challenges in Cyberthreat Intelligence\nCyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) faces various challenges and is constantly evolving. Some of the current challenges and potential future developments in CTI include:\n**Automation and AI**\nThe future of CTI will likely see an increased reliance on automation and artificial intelligence. Machine learning algorithms can more efficiently sift through large datasets, identify patterns, and detect anomalies than humans.\n**Threat Intelligence Platforms**\nDeveloping advanced threat intelligence platforms will enable organizations to aggregate, correlate, and analyze threat data more effectively. These platforms will offer better visualization, reporting, and integration with other security tools.\n**Increased Collaboration**\nOrganizations will continue to recognize the importance of collaboration in CTI. Public-private partnerships, information sharing, and cooperation between sectors and industries will be essential for collective defense.\n**Threat Actor Attribution**\nImproving techniques for attributing cyberattacks to specific threat actors or nation-states will become more refined. This will assist in developing more targeted responses and deterrence strategies.\n**Supply Chain Security**\nWith increasingly complex supply chains, CTI will focus more on securing the digital supply chain. This involves monitoring and mitigating threats that can propagate through interconnected systems.\n**Quantifying Risk**\nOrganizations will work on developing more sophisticated methods for quantifying cyber risks. This will help prioritize CTI efforts and allocate resources effectively.\n**Standards Developments**\nGovernments and regulatory bodies may implement new frameworks and standards for CTI and information sharing. These regulations could help streamline and standardize CTI practices.\n**Enhanced Threat Sharing**\nImproved mechanisms for sharing threat intelligence while addressing privacy and legal concerns will likely emerge. This could involve developing secure information-sharing platforms and standards.\nThe future of Cyber Threat Intelligence holds promise, but it also presents ongoing challenges. As threats continue to evolve, organizations and governments must adapt by leveraging advanced technologies, fostering collaboration, and addressing data privacy and security complexities. As the digital landscape evolves, CTI will remain a critical component of modern cybersecurity strategies.\n## Cyberthreat Intelligence FAQs\n### How does cyberthreat intelligence differ from traditional security measures?\nUnlike traditional security measures that often focus on reactive defense, cyberthreat intelligence emphasizes proactive measures. It involves anticipating and countering threats before they manifest, based on analyzing trends and patterns in cyber adversary behavior.\n### What role does artificial intelligence play in cyberthreat intelligence?\nAI enhances cyberthreat intelligence by automating the collection and analysis of threat data, identifying new threats faster, and predicting future attacks through pattern recognition and machine learning algorithms.\n### How can organizations effectively integrate cyberthreat intelligence into their security strategy?\nOrganizations can integrate CTI by establishing a dedicated threat intelligence team, adopting threat intelligence platforms, regularly training staff on the latest threat landscape, and incorporating intelligence feeds into their security tools.\n### What are the ethical considerations when dealing with cyberthreat intelligence?\nEthical considerations regarding cyberthreat intelligence include ensuring privacy rights are not violated during intelligence gathering, responsibly sharing threat information, and not engaging in offensive cyber tactics considered unethical or illegal.\n### What is the future of cyberthreat intelligence in the context of evolving cyberthreats?\nThe future of CTI lies in the development of more sophisticated analytical tools, greater collaboration within the cybersecurity community, and the integration of CTI into broader risk management and business continuity frameworks as cyberthreats become more complex."
  },
  {
    "Title": "Understanding the Cyber Threat Intelligence Lifecycle | Filigran Blog",
    "URL": "https://filigran.io/understanding-cyber-threat-intelligence-lifecycle/",
    "Query": "cyber threat intelligence",
    "Content cleaned": "Yes (reduced from 10521 to 8817 chars)",
    "Content": "In today\u2019s threat landscape, cyber threats are emerging and evolving at an alarming pace. This is due not only to the evolution of threat actor tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), but also to the expansion of attack surfaces. Now more than ever, it is essential for organizations to adopt a proactive stance and stay ahead of the myriad of threats they face. You\u2019re probably asking yourself, how can this be done? As a CISO or part of a leadership team, how can I effectively protect my organization? The answer lies in Threat Intelligence.\nA mature Threat Intelligence program empowers organizations to make informed decisions at all levels, from strategic leadership level to operational and tactical levels. This program integrates the threat intelligence lifecycle into daily security operations, enabling intelligence analysts to produce insightful reports on current and emerging threat trends. Moreover, these analysts generate operational intelligence for threat hunting, purple teaming, and blocking indicators of compromise using various security tools.\nThis article aims to guide organizations in implementing a robust Threat Intelligence program by detailing the steps of the intelligence cycle and how to leverage Filigran\u2019s OpenCTI platform for each step.\nCyber Threat Intelligence Lifecycle in OpenCTI\n## Planning & Direction\n### Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIRs)\nThe first step in the Cyber Threat Intelligence Lifecycle is Planning & Direction. This phase involves creating Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIR), which are critical intelligence needs that decision-makers must understand to mitigate threats. By identifying these PIRs, organizations can take strategic steps to understand their threat landscape and act proactively to mitigate risks. PIRs also enable an organization to prioritize the most pressing issues. These requirements are strategic in nature and can be broken down into more specific questions, called intelligence gaps or Essential Elements of Information (EEIs), which, when answered, address the overall PIR.\nFor example, a PIR might be, \u201cHow are threat actors targeting my industry?\u201d A corresponding intelligence gap could be, \u201cWhat specific TTPs have threat actors traditionally used against my industry?\u201d This level of specificity helps focus efforts where they matter most.\n### Why are PIRs important?\nPIRs help prioritize and focus collection against the most significant threats facing your organization and address leadership questions, enabling the C-suite to make informed decisions. If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. In OpenCTI, it is recommend to use the Reports, Groupings, or Request for Information containers to document the PIRs.\nPIRs in a Grouping Container\n### Collection Plan\nOnce PIRs and intelligence gaps are identified, the next step is to create a collection plan. This plan outlines the sources you currently use and an assessment of how well those sources are or could address the identified PIRs. If your current sources are inadequate, your team will need to assess which sources might meet your needs, which do not, and which new sources you could add. Your team can then suggest integrating these additional sources into the OpenCTI platform. Sources could include open-source data, premium feeds, TAXII feeds (from ISACs), and connectors to internal security tools like EDRs or SIEMs.\n## Collection\nWith a collection plan in place, the next phase involves gathering intelligence. Analysts must continuously assess whether the collected reports address the established PIRs. In OpenCTI, collection occurs through connectors to various feed vendors, TAXII feeds, and open-source intelligence. OpenCTI can also automate collection based on specified filters related to the PIRs, such as labels.\nUsing Labels to automate CollectionUsing Playbooks to automate Collection\n## Processing\nAfter data collection, the next step is processing, which involves filtering and organizing the information into a usable format. Collected data may come in various formats, including indicators, reports, artifacts, intrusion sets, etc. In OpenCTI, analysts can categorize information related to PIRs, ensuring that all pertinent data is easily accessible for further analysis.\nExample of tying entities collected to the PIRs within the grouping container.Example of tying entities collected to the PIRs within the grouping container \u2013 details\n## Analysis\nOnce the data is processed and organized, analysts evaluate the information using analytic tools such as OpenCTI\u2019s investigations/enrichment portals and structured analytic techniques like hypothesis testing. They then arrive at an analytic conclusion in response to a PIR or its associated EEIs. Analysts should use assessment language, such as \u201cThe Threat Intelligence Team assesses that Scattered Spider will likely target our organization over the next 6 to 12 months\u201d, which could have significant implications if not mitigated. This stage also marks the transition of evidence/information (indicators, TTPs, observables) into intelligence (actionable insights that address a PIR to inform decision-making).\nIn OpenCTI, analysts can conduct this analysis in multiple ways, including proactively investigating top threat actors by placing them or their intrusion sets into containers, launching investigations, and identifying or pivoting on the malware and tools used by these actors. The finding will inform threat hunting and defensive measures. Analysts can draft and produce finished intelligence reports using assessment language directly from OpenCTI via Reports or the content tab within Groupings or Requests for Information.\nInvestigation Graphic\n## Dissemination\nAfter analysis, the findings are disseminated to relevant stakeholders.\u00a0Dissemination can take various forms, from strategic reports for leadership to tactical intelligence for security tools.\nOpenCTI facilitates this process by enabling analysts to export reports or send tactical results to integrated security tools via live streams and connectors.\n## Feedback\nThe final, and often overlooked, step of the intelligence life-cycle is feedback. After disseminating intelligence, it\u2019s crucial for analysts to gather feedback from the stakeholders to evaluate the effectiveness of the provided intelligence. Organizations can assess impact by determining if the analysis addressed the PIRs and whether tactical intelligence improved metrics like Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Respond (MTTR). Finally, members of the intel program can request feedback from the leadership team and other teams within the organization that received the intelligence.\nAlthough the intelligence cycle is iterative, there may be instances when analysts need to loop back to a previous step. For example, during processing, if analysts identify the need for additional information, they may return to the collection phase to gather more data.\n## Conclusion\nIn today\u2019s cybersecurity environment, instituting a Threat Intelligence program is imperative. Such a program enables organizations to prioritize their security efforts, moving away from a reactive, \u201cwhack-a-mole\u201d approach. It facilitates the proactive identification, assessment, and mitigation of threats, ultimately safeguarding the organization from potential financial and reputational damage.\nLastly, a threat intelligence program enables organizational leadership to make informed cyber security and business decisions.\nIf you have any question, request, comment or feedback to share with us, don\u2019t hesitate to\u00a0join us on Slack!"
  },
  {
    "Title": "Beyond STIX: Next-Level Cyber-Threat Intelligence - Dark Reading",
    "URL": "https://www.darkreading.com/threat-intelligence/beyond-stix-next-level-cyber-threat-intelligence",
    "Query": "cyber threat intelligence",
    "Content cleaned": "Yes (reduced from 22635 to 14254 chars)",
    "Content": "Cybersecurity has become central to every enterprise's digital strategy, but to stay ahead of evolving cyber threats, organizations need a common language that turns complex threat data into something universally understandable and actionable. This is where\u00a0Structured Threat Information Expression\u00a0(STIX) comes in \u2014 a standardized language for sharing, storing, and analyzing cyber threat intelligence.\nHowever, simply organizing the data isn't enough to fully understand or counter the sophisticated tactics used by today's threat actors. As\u00a0cyber threats\u00a0evolve, traditional methods of identifying, cataloging, and responding to these threats struggle to keep pace.\n## The Evolution of Cyber-Threat Intelligence Sharing\nSTIX provides a common language for cyber-threat intelligence (CTI) sharing, enabling organizations to categorize and share critical data points like campaigns; threat actors; tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs); observables; and incidents. This categorization allows organizations to gain a deeper understanding of a threat actor's capabilities, patterns, and historical actions. Threat information can then be shared and collaboratively acted upon across a wide array of organizations, making it a foundational tool in cybersecurity.\nRelated: Have Your Say: Dark Reading Seeks Your Input\nThe STIX language was developed as a serialization and exchange format. As such, it is an excellent means for sharing facts and observations with other organizations.\nSince the release of the original STIX 2.1 specification, semantic technologies have advanced. It is now possible to share much richer information with knowledge graphs that provide additional context, detailing motivations (financial, political, or otherwise), skills, resources, TTPs, and behavior and targeting patterns. The added intelligence encapsulated in a knowledge graph gives a more comprehensive profile of a potential threat actor and makes the enhanced threat intelligence more actionable.\nTo enable this greater representation of the STIX 2.1 exchange language, the Cyber Threat Intelligence Ontology (CTIO) is under development as an extension of the\u00a0gistCyber ontology.\n## A Living, Contextualized View of Cyber Threats\nAs cyber threats become increasingly complex, relying solely on the original STIX 2.1 exchange language is no longer enough to combat them effectively. To stay ahead of evolving risks, organizations need a richer, more dynamic framework that goes beyond static data representation. This is where translating STIX data from its JSON format into the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and knowledge graphs becomes essential. Knowledge graphs offer a new level of semantic interoperability, enabling organizations to visualize, explore, and query the relationships and hierarchies between various threat entities.\nRelated: Zscaler Announces Deal to Acquire Red Canary\nKnowledge graphs create a living, contextualized view of cyber threats, transforming what was once just a collection of isolated data points into a comprehensive landscape of interconnected threats.\nWith a knowledge graph, security teams can effectively map an exploit target \u2014 such as the infamous\u00a0Log4Shell vulnerability\u00a0(CVE-2021-44228) \u2014 to specific threat actors who have leveraged it in past campaigns. This capability allows them to prioritize their responses by understanding the vulnerability itself and analyzing its exploitation history, identifying the most likely perpetrators, and assessing the associated risks. This holistic view empowers organizations to adopt a proactive stance against cyber threats, enhancing their overall security posture.\n## Merging Human-Readable Descriptions With Machine-based Logic\nUsing large language models (LLMs) to complement knowledge graphs marks an innovative leap in the application of AI within cybersecurity. By ingesting unstructured text data \u2014 such as incident reports, advisories, or analyst notes \u2014 LLMs can populate knowledge graphs with contextualized threat information. For instance, an LLM can transform descriptions of a spear-phishing campaign or details from an incident report into structured STIX instances, allowing for automated threat profiling and enhancing real-time decision-making.\nRelated: Danabot Takedown Deals Blow to Russian Cybercrime\nThe integration of LLMs and knowledge graphs not only streamlines threat profiling but also sets the stage for utilizing established cybersecurity frameworks to build a more robust understanding of potential threats.\n## Building a Comprehensive Blueprint to Anticipate Threats\nThere is an extensive amount of data available from reliable sources such as MITRE, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Center for Internet Security (CIS), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the National Vulnerability Database. These sources provide indispensable reference data about vulnerabilities, attack patterns, TTPs, mitigations, controls, computational platforms, and more.\nOntologies and knowledge graphs such as MITRE's D3FEND, MITRE's ATT&CK, and NIST's CVE graph databases provide representations of threat analysis data and logic that is both machine-readable and human-readable, as well as highly actionable. It is cybersecurity expertise represented in graph form.\nStandardized ontologies, such as BFO, CCO, gistCyber, and D3FEND,\u00a0can map out everything from vulnerabilities to TTPs and courses of action. When combined with an OWL-based knowledge graph, these frameworks provide a comprehensive blueprint for organizations to understand and anticipate threats. Adding STIX 2.1 via the CTIO into this mix bridges the gap between global standards and enterprise-specific threat intelligence, creating a consolidated knowledge base that draws on years of cybersecurity expertise.\n## A New Paradigm in Cyber Threat Intelligence\nThe convergence of STIX, gistCyber, CTIO, OWL, knowledge graphs, and LLMs represents the next evolution in cybersecurity. Knowledge graphs enriched by AI create an environment where CTI is shared, contextualized, and made actionable. This is more than just a technical advancement; it's a paradigm shift. Cybersecurity is moving toward a system where threat intelligence is rich with context, immediately actionable, and more accessible.\nThe ultimate goal in developing these advanced, AI-powered knowledge graphs is to democratize cybersecurity intelligence. While industry experts continue to analyze, interpret, and act on threat data, the complexity of cyber threats necessitates solutions that can quickly convert expert knowledge into machine-readable formats. By leveraging LLMs and knowledge graphs, organizations can enable non-experts to use cybersecurity data effectively."
  },
  {
    "Title": "What Is A Security Operations Center (SOC)? - Wiz",
    "URL": "https://www.wiz.io/academy/security-operations-center-soc",
    "Query": "security operations center SOC",
    "Content cleaned": "Yes (reduced from 24847 to 17610 chars)",
    "Content": "## What is a SOC?\nA Security Operations Center (SOC) is a centralized function within an organization that employs people, processes, and technology to continuously monitor and improve an organization's security posture while preventing, detecting, analyzing, and responding to cybersecurity incidents.\nEvery SOC is unique. Made up of teams and processes as well as various tools and technologies, businesses can either outsource their SOC or build and maintain it in-house. Regardless of its implementation, the central objective of a SOC is to constantly optimize an organization's security posture and prevent cyberattacks.\nThese days, SOCs are increasingly important: After all, the threat landscape is more damaging than ever before. According to _The Independent_, threat actors caused more than 290 million data leaks in 2023. Without a powerful SOC, it\u2019s almost impossible to prevent leaks and compromises; a SOC guards enterprise data, particularly high-value crown jewels such as business secrets, customers\u2019 personally identifiable information (PII), credentials, and intellectual property.\nThe booming SOC-as-a-service market, which will reach $11.4 billion by 2028, underlines the importance of SOCs. As we\u2019ll see, businesses have many SOC models to choose from and numerous factors to consider before making that decision. However, whichever model a company chooses, the fundamental functions and objectives of a SOC are the same. Let\u2019s take a closer look.\n## Key Goals of a Security Operations Center\nA security operations center's primary goal is to **protect organizational assets and ensure business continuity**. To achieve this, the SOC aims to:\n- **Minimize downtime and financial loss** due to security incidents.\n- **Enhance the organization's security posture** by proactively identifying and mitigating risks.\n- **Improve incident response time** and reduce the impact of cyberattacks.\n- **Maintain compliance with industry regulations** and standards.\n- **Build and maintain a strong security culture** within the organization.\n- **Optimize security investments** through efficient resource allocation.\n### Measuring SOC Goals\nTo effectively measure SOC performance, key performance indicators (KPIs) are essential. These metrics help quantify the SOC's success in achieving its goals.\n**Examples of KPIs:**\n- **Incident Response:** Mean Time to Detect (MTTD), Mean Time to Respond (MTTR), Mean Time to Contain (MTTC), and incident resolution rate.\n- **Threat Detection:** False positive rate, true positive rate, and threat detection efficiency.\n- **Security Posture:** Vulnerability remediation rate, patch compliance, and system configuration compliance.\n- **Cost Efficiency:** Cost per incident, cost per protected asset, and return on security investment (ROSI).\nwiz academy **SOC Metrics: Measuring SecOps KPIs** Read more\n### Aligning SOC Goals with Business Objectives\nA successful SOC should directly contribute to the overall business strategy. To achieve this alignment, the SOC must:\n- **Understand business priorities:** Identify critical assets, systems, and data that support core business functions.\n- **Quantify security risks:** Assess the potential impact of security incidents on business operations, revenue, and reputation.\n- **Demonstrate business value:** Show how the SOC's efforts contribute to revenue generation, cost reduction, or risk mitigation.\n- **Communicate effectively:** Clearly articulate the SOC's role in achieving business objectives to stakeholders.\nwiz blog **CISOs share their top 7 strategies for gaining C-Suite buy-in** Read more\n## How does a SOC function?\n### What are the main roles within a SOC?\n- **Chief information security officers (CISOs)**, who are at the top of the cybersecurity hierarchy, act as the bridge between the SOC and the CEO.\n- **SOC managers** oversee all the teams, tools, workflows, and activities of the SOC.\n- **Security engineers** build and maintain the enterprise\u2019s cybersecurity architecture.\n- **Threat hunters** proactively search for new and hidden threats within the enterprise\u2019s IT estate.\n- **Security analysts** monitor IT environments, red-flag anomalous behaviors, and triage alerts.\n- **Forensic experts** anatomize cyber incidents to unveil the root cause, which can help enterprises prevent similar exploits in the future.\n### What are the day-to-day processes in a SOC?\n- **Threat monitoring:** Scanning IT environments and assets to uncover threats\n- **Alert triage:** Prioritizing alerts and threats based on business and workload contexts\n- **Threat analysis:** Investigating threats to validate their legitimacy and potency\n- **Threat isolation:** Reducing the potential blast radius and attack path of each existing threat\n- **Remediation:** Recovering compromised systems, patching vulnerabilities, and undoing the damage caused by cyber incidents\n- **Forensic investigation:** Conducting thorough studies of threats, cyberattacks, and cloud events to understand adversary tools, tactics, and procedures (TTPs)\n### What are the main technologies and tools in a SOC?\nAn optimal SOC should be holistic and include a spectrum of capabilities. For example, a SOC should provide:\n- The means to identify and inventory all IT assets across physical and virtual infrastructures.\n- Intrusion detection mechanisms to identify signs of unauthorized access.\n- Proactive scanning of virtual machines, containers, container registries, serverless functions, virtual appliances, and managed compute resources (along with prioritization of any uncovered vulnerabilities).\n- Behavioral analytics tools to analyze anomalous patterns within IT environments.\n- Security information and event management (SIEM) tools to collect, manage, and analyze cybersecurity information from various branches of an organization.\n- EDR (endpoint detection and response) to monitor and protect enterprise endpoints.\n- Threat intelligence platforms to study an array of threat data from public, private, internal, and external sources.\n- Cloud Detection and Response to montor and protect an enterprise\u2019s cloud environments\nFigure 1: The Wiz CDR at work\n## What are the different types of SOC models?\nThere are 3 types of SOC models:\n1. **In-house SOCs:** Businesses manage and operate their SOC using only in-house resources.\n2. **Outsourced SOCs:** Enterpriseshire a third-party SOC-as-a-service provider to manage their SOC.\n3. **Hybrid SOCs:** Businesses use a combination of in-house resources and outsourced services to manage their SOC.\nAccording to Gartner, 63% of surveyed enterprises prefer a hybrid SOC model that leverages both in-house and outsourced security resources. Thirty-four percent feature an in-house SOC model that doesn\u2019t include any external service providers.\nwiz academy **What is SOC automation? Why and how to automate your SOC** Read more\n### Choosing a SOC model\nHow does a business know which SOC model it should choose? The following are five key considerations for building or choosing in-house and outsourced SOC models:\n| Considerations | In-House SOC | Outsourced SOC |\n| --- | --- | --- |\n| Customization and cost | An in-house SOC gives organizations a higher degree of control. However, in-house models are more expensive. | Businesses may not always be able to intricately tailor off-the-shelf SOC solutions, but they are considerably cheaper. |\n| Scalability | In-house SOCs are not easy or affordable to scale. | Outsourced SOCs feature higher degrees of scalability, which can help accommodate future variables. |\n| Required expertise | In-house SOC teams have in-depth knowledge of enterprise IT assets and resources. That said, they may lack other critical cybersecurity knowledge or expertise. | Third-party providers may not understand an enterprise\u2019s IT environments as well as in-house security operations teams. On the other hand, third-party teams may have more expertise and skill sets related to the latest cybersecurity threats and trends. |\n| Risk of coverage gaps | Because of the close proximity to their own environments, in-house SOC teams may have a biased or limited perspective. | Outsourced SOCs will likely have a more objective and panoramic view of an enterprise\u2019s IT environments and adversaries. |\n| Ease of updates | It\u2019s often expensive for in-house SOCs to commission and include new tools and technologies. | Third-party providers constantly update and optimize their backend infrastructure and tools to serve their customers with cutting-edge capabilities. |\nAs we can see from the above table, both in-house and outsourced SOC models have myriad advantages and disadvantages. That\u2019s perhaps why the majority of enterprises often choose the best of both worlds. In some cases, though, businesses may have a valid reason to choose one over the other. There\u2019s no clear right or wrong answer when it comes to choosing a SOC model. Instead, it\u2019s about understanding your unique IT and cybersecurity requirements and identifying a model that addresses them."
  },
  {
    "Title": "Core Security Operations Center (SOC) Services",
    "URL": "https://www.justice.gov/jmd/core-security-operations-center-soc-services",
    "Query": "security operations center SOC",
    "Content cleaned": "Yes (reduced from 40410 to 7029 chars)",
    "Content": "Experience the unique advantages of the Department of Justice (DOJ) SOC services offered to federal agency partners. The Justice Security Operations Center (JSOC) stands as the central hub for 24x7, intelligence-driven network surveillance, incident response, interagency information exchange, threat intelligence, and cybersecurity inquiries.\nBy adhering to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) guidelines for SOC shared service providers, the JSOC will partner with your agency to deliver top-tier security and compliance, ensuring the utmost protection of your valuable data and assets.\nThe modular nature of our services allows for cost-effective solutions tailored to your agency's unique requirements, while our 24x7 intelligence-driven approach always guarantees the highest level of cybersecurity.\nBy choosing DOJ SOC services, you are not only investing in the protection of your agency's valuable data and assets, but also fostering a collaborative relationship that promotes the exchange of vital information and best practices in the ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape.\nJoin us in our mission to safeguard our nation's digital frontiers.\n## Cyber Threat Intelligence and Information Sharing\nDOJ\u2019s Cyber Threat Analytics Team (CTAT) provides digital threat monitoring, brand reputation monitoring, data breach monitoring, and very important person (VIP) monitoring to identify risks and threats to agency leadership. CTAT curates and distributes a summary of the previous week\u2019s noteworthy cyber threat news. CTAT maintains a portal that provides daily CTI updates, intelligence summaries, DOJ\u2019s block list, and other items of interest for agency partners.\n## Detection Content Management\nThe DOJ curates detection alerts and correlation searches by leveraging our Unified Security Content Catalog (USCC) and existing agency partner content. We provide engineering support to integrate your Splunk instance to the DOJ\u2019s Splunk instance and the Justice Incident Management System (JIMS).\n## Network and System Monitoring\nThe JSOC provides 24x7x365 monitoring for security events identified by best-in-class security tools to identify possible cybersecurity incidents.\n## Incident Analysis and Response\nOur JSOC team analyzes the incident, parties involved, timeframe, and correlation to other incidents, all based on available agency data. If needed, JSOC requests additional data from the customer to complete its analysis. The JSOC provides agencies with recommendations for additional investigative steps, as well as steps for incident response and recovery. Our JSOC subject matter experts will conduct follow up with the agency customer to track incident closure. DOJ provides access to the JIMS that maintains a record of all security incidents, as well as a portal for customers to access dashboards and knowledge management pertaining to their service.\n## Core SOC Benefits\nYour organization has unique needs that don\u2019t always translate with commercial cybersecurity vendors. At DOJ, we fully understand your opportunities and how to navigate through the government landscape. When considering the benefits of a managed service, agencies like yours quickly identify DOJ\u2019s advantages. Some of the benefits that set DOJ apart from other cybersecurity options include:\n- Reducing your total cost of ownership (TCO) for SOC capabilities by leveraging DOJ\u2019s shared resourcing model\n- 24x7x365 analysis of security alerts by DOJ analysts that reduces the time your staff spends trying to detect and respond to incidents\n- Gaining the ability to leverage DOJ\u2019s SMEs, intelligence analysts, and cyber threat hunters in the event of a major incident\n- Proactive and ongoing cyber threat hunting of Security Information and Event (SIEM) logs based on a variety of curated cyber threat intelligence sources\n- Minimizing the impact of staff turnover and reduction of cybersecurity team burnout\n- Future-proofing your needs with DOJ\u2019s enhanced scalability and agility\n- Securing your alignment with the most current Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and CISA cybersecurity mandates\n## Explore premium services:\nWith the understanding that every agency is unique and has specific needs to address, DOJ bases its model on flexibility and customization, offering customers advanced add-ons, described below. Click on a service to learn more.\n### SIEM Platform\nOur DOJ team designs, implements, and configures the full SIEM deployment, including the cloud platform and supporting on-premise infrastructure. DOJ provides full-service ongoing administration of the SIEM.\n### Endpoint Protection Platform Management\")\nDOJ assists customers to deploy CrowdStrike agents to endpoints, unlocking capabilities like incident response and cyber threat hunting. Our DOJ SOC provides operations and maintenance for CrowdStrike tenants.\n### Advanced Email Security Management\")\nBefore providing expert operations and maintenance, DOJ assists customers to deploy Trellix Email Threat Protection (ETP) within its inbound email flow, including integration with Verizon E3A and the customer\u2019s email provider.\n### Cyber Threat Hunting\nUtilizing industry best practices, DOJ can perform customized engagement-based cyber threat hunts tailored to the customer risks, concerns, environment, security tools, and specific hunt objectives.\n### Digital Forensics"
  },
  {
    "Title": "The Benefits of a Security Operations Center for Financial Institutions",
    "URL": "https://www.bitlyft.com/resources/the-benefits-of-a-security-operations-center-for-financial-institutions",
    "Query": "security operations center SOC",
    "Content cleaned": "Yes (reduced from 4498 to 3460 chars)",
    "Content": "## The Benefits of a Security Operations Center for Financial Institutions\nFinancial institutions are prime targets for cybercriminals, and the need for robust security is more critical than ever. A Security Operations Center (SOC) provides continuous monitoring, threat detection, and rapid response to cybersecurity incidents, ensuring that financial institutions stay ahead of potential threats. By integrating real-time surveillance and expert analysis, SOCs help financial institutions protect sensitive financial data and maintain regulatory compliance.\n## 24/7 Monitoring and Threat Detection\nOne of the primary benefits of a SOC is its ability to provide 24/7 monitoring of networks and systems. This continuous oversight allows financial institutions to detect and respond to threats in real-time, reducing the likelihood of successful cyberattacks. The proactive nature of SOC monitoring ensures that any suspicious activity is quickly addressed before it can escalate into a major security breach.\n## Did You Know?\n> Did you know that financial institutions face three times as many cyberattacks as other industries? A SOC provides the constant vigilance needed to protect sensitive data from these persistent threats.\n## Incident Response and Mitigation\nA SOC enables financial institutions to respond rapidly to security incidents, mitigating the impact of potential breaches. With dedicated cybersecurity professionals and advanced tools, SOCs can identify, contain, and resolve threats before they cause significant damage. This quick response is critical for maintaining the integrity of financial systems and minimizing downtime.\n## Conclusion\nA Security Operations Center is an essential component of financial institutions\u2019 security strategies. With continuous monitoring, rapid incident response, and expert threat detection, SOCs provide the protection needed to safeguard sensitive financial data. To learn more about the benefits of implementing a SOC, visit BitLyft AIR\u00ae Security Operations Center.\n## FAQs\nWhat is a Security Operations Center (SOC)?\nA Security Operations Center (SOC) is a centralized unit that provides continuous monitoring, threat detection, and incident response to protect organizations from cyberattacks.\nWhy do financial institutions need a SOC?\nFinancial institutions need a SOC because they are frequent targets of cyberattacks. A SOC provides continuous monitoring and rapid incident response, ensuring that sensitive financial data remains protected.\nWhat are the key benefits of a SOC for financial institutions?\nKey benefits include 24/7 monitoring, real-time threat detection, rapid incident response, and regulatory compliance, all of which help secure financial data and maintain operational continuity.\nHow does a SOC improve incident response?\nA SOC improves incident response by providing dedicated security professionals and advanced tools to identify, contain, and resolve security incidents quickly, minimizing the impact of cyberattacks.\nWhat is the role of a SOC in regulatory compliance?\nA SOC helps financial institutions meet regulatory compliance by providing detailed monitoring, reporting, and threat intelligence that align with industry standards such as PCI DSS and GDPR."
  }
]