Cyber incident response is a crucial aspect of any business. A cyber incident response platform enables teams to quickly respond to attacks with streamlined processes, automated alerts, and better documentation.
Streamlined processes help reduce ad-hoc responses by decreasing the work SOC analysts need to do. This includes removing false positives and simplifying alert management.
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Automated Reporting
The best incident response platforms provide a way to document the incident resolution process in detail. They also integrate existing workflows and communication tools to make collaboration easy for teams and stakeholders. They should be reliable, too – after all, they are meant to be your most robust defense against cyberattacks.
Surging cybercrime rates, including record-high phishing numbers, show organizations can’t afford to let even one attack go unaddressed. That’s why security teams need to be able to identify and address incidents quickly.
Security alerts can be overwhelming, so choosing an incident response platform that automates a large part of the response process to save time and prevent employee burnout is vital. It’s also essential to look for a versatile tool that can evolve with your team’s needs. Look for features like centralized alert management, automatic enrichment from multiple threat intelligence sources, and the ability to create and execute playbooks that define the steps systems or security solutions should take when a specific event is detected.
Streamlined Processes
Business processes are the wide-ranging collection of responsibilities and accomplishments a firm relies on to achieve its objectives. Streamlining these processes can significantly reduce the time it takes for the firm to complete its work and improve employee satisfaction.
To identify areas for improvement, it’s important to first document each existing process from start to finish. This step ensures that everyone involved has a frame of reference and can offer frank feedback on what needs to be changed. This also helps you understand how much each process costs, including labor and technology.
Once you’ve documented your existing processes, it’s time to streamline them. One way to do this is by implementing an incident response (IR) platform that offers automated orchestration and playbooks designed to help contain breaches and remediate them faster. IR platforms also enable teams to proactively monitor their networks and identify threats based on preplanned responses automatically triggered by specific threat types. This allows teams to save time on manual work and focus on detecting and responding to the most critical security incidents.
Enhanced Detection
Dedicated incident response tools enable organizations to implement incident detection, reporting, communication, and recovery procedures. These procedures help to mitigate incidents before they impact business operations or lead to data loss and financial penalties.
Security teams can create and automate playbooks for common attacks to speed up the incident management process. These processes can also be adapted to the specific needs of an organization’s environment. Once the platform is configured and integrated, staff can practice and test them to ensure they function as intended.
Many specialized incident response platforms incorporate security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) capabilities, which can reduce alert fatigue by centralizing logging, performing threat triage, reducing the number of threats that SOC analysts need to review, and minimizing false positives. These capabilities can also reduce mean time to detect and improve SOC efficiency and save costs by enabling teams to focus on other high-value activities.
Dedicated incident response tools can be hosted separately from the organization’s primary infrastructure and identity and access management systems to prevent attackers from disrupting IT services or using stolen credentials to compromise the system.
Faster Response
Getting hit with a cyberattack isn’t just costly for your business; it can be devastating. According to this year’s IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report, most companies shutter within six months following a successful attack.
Cyberattacks occur quickly, and teams must be ready to respond promptly and efficiently. An incident response platform can reduce the time it takes to identify a threat, decide on a course of action and carry out that action.
Fit-for-purpose incident response platforms leverage automation to reduce alert fatigue, perform incident triage, automatically investigate and respond to threats, improve ticket management and response times, conserve human efforts for high-value activities, save money, and more. They also help reduce the cognitive burden of security staff with advanced capabilities like automated correlation, playbook-led prioritization, and ease of reporting. Each time engineers switch between tools, there’s a cost in terms of time and focus. Using a single incident response tool eliminates that friction and allows teams to move faster through the various stages of responding to and resolving a threat.
Enhanced Communication
Security operations teams are often overwhelmed by an avalanche of alerts. These alerts are generated by various tools and platforms, making it difficult for them to analyze each one in detail.
Technological cyber incident response platforms provide teams with playbooks that outline procedures for handling incidents. This helps them develop their incident response skills and respond faster, saving time and resources. These platforms can also be a valuable tools for training and onboarding new team members.
In addition, specialized security incident response platforms enable organizations to automate some of their responses by leveraging threat intelligence and automation technologies. This allows them to perform low-level tasks that previously had to be completed by humans, such as vulnerability scanning. Moreover, they can prioritize high-risk threats and escalate them to security analysts for further analysis and response actions. Security automation technology makes it easier for teams to execute security orchestration and response playbooks. It reduces the burden on the human team by performing many of these tasks at machine speed.