Description

This curriculum spans the equivalent of a multi-workshop incident response readiness program, covering governance, detection, response, forensics, communication, remediation, and improvement activities as conducted in mature security operations environments.

Module 1: Establishing Incident Management Governance

Define incident classification criteria aligned with business impact levels, ensuring consistent triage across departments and reducing ambiguity during escalation.
Select and document roles within the incident response team (e.g., incident commander, communications lead), assigning backup personnel to prevent single points of failure.
Negotiate authority thresholds for incident commanders, including the ability to suspend systems or override access controls during active crises.
Integrate incident management policies with existing compliance frameworks such as ISO 27001 or NIST SP 800-61, ensuring auditability and regulatory alignment.
Establish cross-functional escalation paths that include legal, PR, and executive leadership, with predefined trigger conditions for their involvement.
Implement a formal process for periodic review and approval of incident response plans by the CISO and board-level risk committee.

Module 2: Designing Detection and Triage Capabilities

Configure SIEM correlation rules to reduce false positives by tuning thresholds based on historical alert data and asset criticality.
Deploy endpoint detection agents across all corporate-managed devices, including exceptions for legacy systems with compensating controls documented.
Implement automated enrichment of alerts using threat intelligence feeds, prioritizing IOCs from industry-specific ISACs.
Design triage workflows that require initial assessment within 15 minutes for critical alerts, with SLA tracking in the ticketing system.
Integrate cloud workload protection platforms (CWPP) with on-prem detection tools to ensure consistent visibility across hybrid environments.
Establish a process for regular red teaming of detection rules to validate efficacy and identify blind spots in monitoring coverage.

Module 3: Orchestrating Incident Response Execution

Activate communication bridges (e.g., dedicated voice bridges, Slack channels) within 10 minutes of declaring a major incident, with access logging enabled.
Execute containment actions such as network segmentation or account disabling based on pre-approved runbooks, with change records generated automatically.
Preserve volatile data from affected systems using memory acquisition tools before isolating endpoints for forensic analysis.
Coordinate with cloud providers to obtain logs and snapshots under shared responsibility models, ensuring contractual access rights are exercised.
Document all response actions in a centralized incident log with immutable timestamps to support post-incident review and legal requirements.
Manage third-party vendor access during response activities using time-bound credentials and session monitoring.

Module 4: Conducting Forensic Investigation and Analysis

Image disk drives using write-blockers and verify integrity with cryptographic hashes before commencing forensic examination.
Apply timeline analysis to correlate system logs, registry changes, and file system artifacts to reconstruct attacker activity sequences.
Use sandboxing to analyze malicious payloads in an isolated environment, capturing network, process, and file system behaviors.
Identify lateral movement by mapping authentication logs across domains, focusing on anomalous logon times and source IP addresses.
Preserve chain of custody for digital evidence using tamper-evident packaging and audit-trail-enabled storage systems.
Coordinate with external labs for advanced malware reverse engineering when internal capabilities are insufficient, with NDAs and data handling agreements in place.

Module 5: Managing Stakeholder Communication

Draft internal status updates using a standardized template that includes impact assessment, current actions, and next steps, reviewed by legal before distribution.
Prepare external disclosure statements in coordination with corporate communications, aligning with regulatory breach notification timelines.
Conduct executive briefings with visual dashboards showing incident scope, response progress, and resource utilization.
Implement a secure portal for sharing incident updates with business unit leaders, restricting access based on need-to-know.
Respond to inquiries from law enforcement by providing requested data under formal legal process, with internal approval workflows.
Manage media interactions through designated spokespersons, ensuring all public statements are pre-vetted by legal and PR teams.

Module 6: Executing Post-Incident Remediation

Prioritize remediation tasks based on root cause analysis, focusing first on vulnerabilities actively exploited during the incident.
Rebuild compromised systems from golden images rather than patching in place, ensuring known-good configurations are restored.
Implement compensating controls such as enhanced monitoring or access restrictions while permanent fixes undergo testing and deployment.
Update firewall rules and EDR policies to block identified attack techniques, validating changes in staging environments before production rollout.
Re-enable user access incrementally after verifying account integrity and resetting credentials through a secure process.
Conduct configuration drift audits post-remediation to confirm systems adhere to baseline security standards.

Module 7: Driving Continuous Improvement

Facilitate blameless post-mortems within 48 hours of incident resolution, capturing action items with assigned owners and deadlines.
Update incident response runbooks based on lessons learned, incorporating new detection signatures and response procedures.
Measure MTTR (mean time to respond) and other KPIs across incidents to identify systemic delays in detection or escalation.
Integrate updated threat models into annual risk assessments, adjusting control priorities based on observed attack patterns.
Conduct biannual tabletop exercises simulating high-impact scenarios, involving cross-functional teams to validate coordination.
Require completion of remediation tasks before formally closing incident records, with verification by the security operations manager.