Responding to a hack or cyber breach effectively requires the right technology. Here are the top 10 incident management tools for your organization.
Hacks and breaches can happen in a digital environment. These instances disrupt productivity and financial resources, especially if there is no proper and systematic response mechanism. Top incident management tools can help prevent an escalation of these problems into a crisis.
Left unchecked, these can cause an emergency that can quickly escalate into a crisis. It can compromise your data integrity and, in the long run, the reputation of your brand.
This is why it is crucial to have an incident management platform to handle these contingencies. It will act as the first line of defense to protect critical business data. This system should identify and respond to the root cause of problems and avoid it from happening again.
For forensic analysis and breach assessment, seven incident management technology tools can be relied on in such eventualities.
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AlienVault
AlienVault OSSIM (Open Source Security Information and Event Management) provides a thorough perspective of your digital system. This capability emanates from its asset and log management features, getting information from other security tools to gather context about the problem.
This SIEM tool comes complete with normalization, event collection, and correlation. Security engineers created it with a simple tenet in mind — a SIEM should have necessary security controls to have security visibility.
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Volatility
Combating system volatility to provide stability, Volatility is a memory forensics framework that enables comprehensive analysis and extraction of intelligence from volatile memory dumps. It can gather data from network connections, ongoing processes, and similar process IDs. Afterward, it collects all this information in a text file for better reference.
This tool is integral because security consultants typically have access only to memory images. Doing memory forensics techniques will reveal deleted data and other digital artifacts that the attacker was trying to hide.
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TheHive Project
TheHive Project is another IR platform that is accessible to the world because it is free and open-source. This allows multiple security analysts to simultaneously conduct incident investigations, saving time and resources in the process.
It also has features that set up new notifications for task assignments and the previewing of new alerts with multiple sources. Examples of these are email digests and SIEM alerts. There are templates in place to help analysts find essential insights into the pursuit of faster solutions.
TheHive is a 4-in-1 security incident platform with integrations of malware information sharing. It prioritizes speed in IT incident investigations and makes life easier for CERTs, CSIRTs and SOCs.
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Cynet 360
Cynet 360 offers a comprehensive set of remediation actions for IT incident responders. These include ways to address malicious rifles, attacker-controlled network flow, infected hosts, and accounts breached. With this free IR platform, security consultants can have complete visibility of the digital environment they are working in — all in just less than an hour.
Responses are even quicker. It only takes a click to find remediations for attacks. The central management dashboard can help you build remediation policies for automated threat removal and blocking. It can also reduce investigation time because users can immediately see the attack scope and its indicators.
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Cyphon
This platform offers a collection of tools for the gathering, processing and triaging of IT attacks. It can collect data from message logs, email and even APIs. Security analysts can study data depending on how much they need.
It is more than a data collection tool, however. It is an all-in-one incident management solution that can collaborate with other APIs for faster workflow. Analysts can escalate problems and share them with other team members for a more comprehensive investigation. This helps build transparency and teamwork; it can have faster results for issues and errors.
Cyphon can provide a view of IT problems according to their degree of criticality and investigate alerts and tasks being performed as of the moment.
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Sans Investigative Forensics Toolkit (SIFT) Workstation
Based on Ubuntu, the Sans Investigative Forensics Toolkit or SIFT provides resources for an in-depth digital forensic investigation. It is designed to match any incident response — showing that even if it is free and open-source, it can hold its own with high-quality effectiveness.
SIFT is created by Rob Lee and his team, undergoing constant revisions and updates to keep up with the growing digital threats of our time. It is intended as a community public service and is one of the most prevalent incident management tools because it now has over 100,000 downloads. It is also available as a download through a VMware appliance.
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GRR Rapid Response
Google’s very own GRR Rapid Response framework gives security analysts the capability to do live forensics investigations even if they are remote. This is especially important during this pandemic when social distancing protocols are at a premium.
This platform is scalable and quick, able to respond to triage and forensic analysis without unnecessary delays. It has two parts, the GRR client, which is employed on the digital environment that requires investigation, and the GRR server that helps security experts process the data collected on the system.
These security information and event management (SIEM) software vendors have evolved beyond mere log management and can introduce advanced statistical analysis and machine learning. When IT threats happen, it is best to respond to them with a comprehensive incident management tools list.
Incident Management Process
When choosing the best incident management tools for your company, it is essential to understand the process behind the management of these breaches and hacks:
- Incident Identification. Determination of the problem is the foremost task in responding to a crisis. There must be the right set of tools and technology to identify the type of breach that the system has experienced.
- Incident Logging. Upon discovering a problem, there must be proper documentation to help audit and track critical systems. This is important to create a plan that will allow experts to retrace steps to determine the threat’s root cause.
- Diagnosis and Investigation. With the problem determined, it is then imperative to thoroughly investigate how the breach happened. This will delve into critical technical details about what exactly went wrong.
- Escalation of Issue. After the threat has been identified and diagnosed, it is time to escalate tasks, responsibilities, and resources to properly handle the issue.
- Resolution of Problem. After attending to the problem, there must be steps in place to prevent such a situation from arising again to help avoid further unnecessary disruptions. There must be a premium on customer feedback and satisfaction, ensuring that the brand and reputation do not suffer needlessly.
Pointers to Ponder When Choosing a Platform
There are numerous options when choosing incident management technology tools. Each situation is unique and has different implications for different businesses. For this matter, it’s important to have alternatives in place to find the best combination for your needs.
Some platforms provide a better fit for incident management, while some specialize in specific tasks. Some offer customizations and integrations. Here are vital factors you need to consider when choosing a toolset you can use for incident management:
Openness
Transparency is the key to any effective IT incident management. Security analysts should encounter no problems accessing the information they need as soon as possible. It must have a systematic layout for an easier workflow.
Apart from responders, visibility is also vital to company stakeholders who want to get regular updates.
Monitoring is essential to help collect vital data from various services in real-time. This can provide excellent visibility into your digital system’s health and trigger alarms if there are incidents. Time is of the essence in any breach. These must be acted upon as soon as possible.
The platform must have useful monitoring tools to have oversight over the digital infrastructure. The coverage must be 24/7 across all servers. An on-call service desk is the first line of defense should alarms be triggered. This provides a venue to report incidents and potential problems with a service portal for filing quick tickets. It is best if there is an automated knowledge-based system to provide initial answers.
The platform must have a good system in place for on-call responders to schedule responses, escalations and notifications.
Reliability
Stability is an essential aspect of any management platform because they are already responding to a critical threat. If the tools itself will be a problem, the remediation will suffer unnecessary delays.
A good platform will provide adequate protection to these tools. The right solution is to use tools embedded in a digital cloud such as Opsgenie and Slack. Cloud support will eliminate or minimize outages that may occur during a crucial response.
There must be a clear path for communication to help solve problems immediately. It allows responders to share observations, findings, and actions. This must come with time stamps and archives for more straightforward documentation and tracking. Studying these logs will help provide fresh insights into averting similar situations in the future.
It is best to have multiple and dedicated channels for the response team to communicate. Keeping this in top shape will help build trust with customers — turning a negative experience into a positive development.
Adaptability
A cost-efficient incident management toolkit must have versatility so that it can integrate with other APIs or customize responses according to the needs of the business. The digital landscape is ever-changing, and the flexibility to handle untoward incidents will be a strong advantage for your incident management program.
Importance of Response
It may be quite tempting to overlook IT cyber attacks as nothing more than just a nuisance. But at its very worst, it can hamper a business’s operations and permanently destroy one’s place in an industry by tainting one’s brand or facilitating a significant data privacy breach.
To illustrate, here are several key areas where breaches and IT incidents can take place. All of these should not be taken lightly:
- Malware
- Cryptocurrency theft
- Email and phishing assaults
- Intellectual property theft
- Payment card frauds
- Password hacking
All companies should be wise to protect their data integrity. This is why fielding top incident management tools are very vital.
Instead of ignoring threats, praying that they will resolve themselves on their own, it is best to undergo incident management to reinstate normalcy in your operations as soon as possible. Nipping problems in the bud will also help avoid any additional issues because of neglect. In any industry, it is crucial to maintain the quality of service at all times. Any interruption will cause significant losses to your company.
Expert Guidance for Incident Management
Incident management can be challenging, with all the technical details and network analysis that must be overcome. Trusting this project to security experts will prove to be a cost-efficient move because it will subject your business to minimize risks instead of doing it from the ground up.
RSI Security has the tools, talent and thorough knowledge to manage and respond to any untoward cyberattacks. Our management solutions are state-of-the-art and designed to meet companies’ custom needs, urgency, transparency, cost efficiency, and aptitude.
As far as the security response is concerned, our team of experts is hands-on and on-site whenever possible. Our insights are always within reach to provide long-term solutions and scalable answers to your company, especially today’s volatile economy.
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