Steps to Follow to Reinforce Security Detection and Response

In this ever-evolving digital landscape, there are two types of organizations:

• Those that have been breached
• Those that will be breached

All kinds of businesses—regardless of the size—are at risk of security breaches, no matter how many layers of security they have. So the real question you should be asking is: are you able to respond appropriately and quickly enough when an attack happens?

This is where a solid security detection and response plan comes in.

Take it as a crucial process where your security teams need a coordinated and organized approach to any incident.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the most important steps you need to take to efficiently implement security detection and response.

Prepare essential tools and layout processes

A single antivirus is not enough to keep your networks secure. There’s a high chance of threats slipping through this barrier, especially with the presence of visibility gaps and floods of false positives and negatives.

In this case, you might want to consider the SOC Visibility Triad approach to fortify your security detection and response plan. This include three essential solutions, which are:

• SIEM – processes the extent and depth of threats
• Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) – your window into endpoints
• Network Detection and Response (NDR) – prompts the detection of breaches at every stage of compromise

Implementing such an approach allows you to eliminate weak points and boost your cybersecurity through integration.

Identify, evaluate and determine the extent of the incident

A lot of malicious activities can be detected in the network traffic. This is where you can perform a forensic evaluation of the traffic patterns and content using tools that alert you of a compromise. This includes:

• Port scanning
• Communication with command and control
• Botnet servers
• High data transfers
• Anomalies and changes in the host’s behavior

After these detection tools perform their job and notify you of suspicious activities on your network, the next step would be to identify the cause of the vulnerability, as well as the device/s responsible for it. Here you can use NDR tools that can provide you with crucial information, such as:

• Relevant device through IP address
• Device domain name
• Time of detection
• Physical address of the device
• User identity
• URLs
• Hashes
• IP addresses

Analyzing the extent of the incident is also important, especially since modern threats tend to perform lateral movement and spread quickly throughout the network.

Respond at an early stage

One of the major goals of a good security detection and response plan is to successfully contain malicious codes to alleviate their impact on your network and data.

To achieve this, your entire response process should include some basic—but essential—steps, such as:

• Blocking incoming emails on the email server
• Removing malicious emails from user mailboxes
• Blocking malicious URLs from access on proxy
• Flagging possibly infected workstations that have visited malicious URLs
• Flagging workstations that downloaded unwanted payload
• Block ransomware traffic that displays calling home on IPS, firewall, and on proxy
• Prevent out-of-office workstations from connecting to your network until they are scanned

Recover

This step is where you ensure that the malicious code that entered your network has been removed. Determine the entry point of the breach, plug the security hole and implement patches.

When you’re through with that, you need to clean all affected devices and systems to make their functions restored and you’re ready to return back to business.

Assess

The assessment stage is where you’ll be completing an incident report to help you improve and make adjustments to your security detection and response plan. You should also continue with security monitoring even during this stage, particularly since some attacks may be only a cover for another malicious activity.

During this stage, review:

• What happened and when
• How well your incident team performed
• Were documented procedures followed?
• Were those procedures adequate
• What information was missing when it was needed
• What actions slowed recovery
• What could be done differently
• What can be done to fend off future incidents
• What indicators can be looked for in the future

The results of reviewing these questions can be used to update your policies and procedures, while also creating useful institutional knowledge for future incidents.

Conclusion

Remember, a solid security strategy is an ongoing process. You might want to consider conducting security training to educate your employees if there was a human or social vulnerability exposed.

If you want to protect your network better, you should carry out a comprehensive security detection and response plan. Take your security response plan to the next level by considering following through with these essential steps.

Comodo has top-notch security services that can reduce your response time and the impact of a breach, get in touch with us today.