What do you do if you suspect a security breach in your system administration role?

If possible, take a snapshot of the affected system (virtual machine). If it is a physical server, you may want to inspect currently running processes before removing power, as you may lose data by killing the processes if you take the system off of power immediately to image drives. If the compromise appears limited to a home directory or (for example) single website user, take a full copy of the relevant directories, preserving timestamps, and set this aside. Then begin to correlate log files with recently modified files and use other tools to begin your investigation.

If you suspect a security breach in your system administration role, act swiftly and decisively. Begin by isolating affected systems to prevent further compromise and minimize potential damage. Alert relevant stakeholders, including IT security teams and management, to initiate incident response protocols. Conduct thorough investigation and analysis to validate the breach, identify the entry point, and assess the extent of the compromise. Implement remediation measures promptly, such as patching vulnerabilities and strengthening access controls, while preserving evidence for forensic analysis. Communication with stakeholders should be transparent and ongoing throughout the resolution process.

If I suspect a security breach in my system administration role, I would immediately isolate the affected systems from the network to prevent further damage, then assess the extent of the breach by analyzing logs and monitoring suspicious activity. Next, I'd notify relevant stakeholders and follow established incident response protocols to contain, eradicate, and recover from the breach, all while preserving evidence for investigation and future prevention.

An assessment of a suspected security incident is essential. This assessment is needed to: - Help determine if a security threat has been experienced/ is strongly suspected. - Identify how the security threat arose. - Identify how long the security threat may have been experienced. As the threat may have been experienced for a while prior to its detection. - Identify what application(s)/ service(s), data, etc., are being impacted by the security incident. - Identify (scope out) any other dependent application(s)/ service(s) that may be adversely impacted by the security incident. - Determine initial containment steps that should be undertaken. - Provide initial report to relevant stakeholders. - Inform staff about the security event.

Initial response to a security threat, after completing an assessment, will be to contain the impact of the security incident as effectively as possible. Though remember you may need to be able to monitor the security threat to collect details for the authorities and/ or scope out the extent of impact experienced from the security threat. Note: Containment may also involve validating the viability of your backups. Particularly, if it is believed the security threat has been experienced for a period of time, prior to detection.

Post-incident reviews are critical, to: - Identify the potential cause(s) of the security breach. - Identify how to prevent such a security breach in the future. Including how to improve monitoring, etc. - Identify if the recovery and service restoration processes were effective. As well as where possible improvements could be made, etc. - Determine if any improvements to security threat communications, if suspected, during resolution, identification training, etc., is required. - Are there any changes to your patching, monitoring, backup, disaster recovery processes, etc., required.

Before restoring data, the method of compromise should have been determined and patched. If a patch is not available for a vulnerable application, then either virtual patching should be considered, or a risk/benefit analysis of making the data read-only may need to be considered, as examples.

Remember, you need to keep your staff informed about security incidents. This includes: - How to identify a possible security incident. - How to initially respond to a security incident. Including what to do with their computer, what and how to escalate details about the security incident. Taking into account the staff member may be off site. - As well as details about the ongoing impact of the security incident and what aspects of staff work/ operations are being impacted, etc. As resolution of the security incident may prevent certain/ all staff from working normally. So, you need a way to communicate with staff that does not rely on their computers. It helps to have a very detailed/ comprehensive incident/ security response plan.