What are the best practices for training staff to respond to a cyber attack?

? Les Fiches technique de Reponse face aux attaques sont obligatoires. ??Elles doivent exister pour chaque type d’attaque . Elles doivent être le plus simple possible. ??Et surtout elles doivent avoir été testé dans un environnement de test au préalable avec les équipes pour les rendre plus efficace le jour de l’attaque

One of the key things security professionals overlook is cyber training is a two way objective. It is very easy to put together a top ten list of indicators of compromise. It's an entirely different thing to implement that understanding in your organization. Maytime, this takes a security professional in the field to learn what, why, and how an application works before providing training.

Train staff to respond to cyber attacks through regular simulations and drills, mimicking various attack scenarios. Educate them on recognizing attack signs and whom to contact in case of an incident. Provide clear, documented response procedures with defined roles and responsibilities. Foster collaboration between IT, security, and other relevant departments. Emphasize the importance of reporting incidents promptly and facilitate post-incident reviews to refine response strategies, ensuring preparedness and effective response.

Best practices for training staff to respond to a cyber attack include conducting regular training sessions to familiarize staff with potential threats and response protocols. Use simulated cyber attack scenarios to provide hands-on experience. Emphasize the importance of immediate reporting of suspicious activities. Train staff in basic security measures like password management and recognizing phishing attempts. Encourage a culture of security awareness, ensuring all employees understand their role in safeguarding the organization's digital assets. Regularly update training to cover new threats and security practices.

Ensuring staff are properly trained to identify indicators of compromise (IoCs) is essential to that initial notification that you are under attack. This comes in two forms, dedicated blue team members actively looking for IoCs as part of their primary responsibilities and daily users being aware of their account activity. You can offload a dedicated blue team responsibility to an MSSP if the business model supports it.

Create a proactive mindset to contain the breach and limit its impact. Train responders to isolate affected systems, disconnect compromised devices, and implement network segmentation. Simulate attack scenarios to cultivate hands-on experience in containment strategies. Encourage collaboration among IT, security, and incident response teams for a unified effort. Establish clear communication channels to disseminate containment directives efficiently, reducing response time. By prioritizing containment in training programs, organizations not only minimize the fallout of cyber incidents but also fortify their defense mechanisms.

In the aftermath of a cyber attack, the focus shifts to eradication/eliminating the threat to prevent any residual risks. Equip your staff with comprehensive training on identifying and neutralizing malicious elements. Emphasize the importance of eradicating all instances of compromised code, malware, or unauthorized access. Simulate realistic attack scenarios in training sessions, allowing staff to practice eradication procedures (for examples, ransomwares without payload, like Encrypt-Delete-Test). Encourage the use of advanced threat detection tools and automated response mechanisms to streamline the process.

Your staff should have a knowledge on how to analyze the attack—identifying entry points, tactics, and potential vulnerabilities exploited. Encourage the use of forensic tools to gather evidence and reconstruct the attack timeline. Simulate realistic attack scenarios in training sessions, allowing staff to practice systematic analysis. Train responders to leverage ThreatIntell sources to stay informed about evolving cyber threats. Whenever an attack occurs on a known partner or company, try retracing your steps and mapping them via TTP (Mitre Att&CK). Having the digital footprint makes it much easier to identify a particular attack.

?In addition to the analysis of the attack. ??It is necessary to check if a persistence has been put in place by the hackers. ??This is an integral part of a complete analysis. ?Without the latter and its validation that no account or process has been created by the attacker to return after the attack, then the attack analysis work is not complete/completed.

Lo importante a la hora de Analizar el ataque es ser ordenado. Cual es el paciente 0? Como lograron obtener acceso a nuestra infraestructura? que se comprometio primero? cual fue el punto de quiebre, donde encontraron la vulnerabilidad que pudieron explotar? Fue por ingenieria social? Estaba nuestro personal no TI debidamente capacitado para diferenciar un correo de Pishing de algo legitimo? También fomentar el uso de herramientas forenses que no sirvan para reunir evidencia, reconstruir el escenario del ataque y entender como se llevo a cabo en un entorno controlado que nos permita ver que medidas podemos tomar al respecto para fortalecer nuestra postura de seguridad. Tomar los resultados de todo esto para llevarlo a las capacitaciones

Desde mi punto de vista, la clave para mejorar en aspectos de seguridad posterior a un ataque esta en la documentación y los playbook. Documentar es imprescindible, y poder volver sobre nuestros pasos de que estaba implementado, como lo estaba, que plan de respuesta utilizamos, que tiempos de respuesta tuvimos de manera efectiva, que controles implementados fueron vulnerados, sobre que sistemas se tomo control, etc. La lista podría ser mas extensa, pero lo importante es empezar a Documentar. Eso nos va a dar una vista amplia de cuales fueron nuestros puntos débiles de manera factible y precisa y no como mera especulación, de forma que podamos mejorar esas brechas, y aprender del incidente y madurar nuestros procesos de seguridad.

I believe this is one of the areas where company's often fall behind. Too often the tests of incident response are just checking if the SIEM rules are firing or not and do not simulate an actual attack. I am not a big fan of buying products but here implementing something like a breach and attack simulation solution can often show you the different pathways that can be triggered and where potential weaknesses or blind spots may be present.

Algo vital seria tomar la responsabilidad y el compromiso de poder realizar ejercicios de simulación de adversarios y de ataques reales al menos de manera anual. Muchas veces se verifican y auditan los procesos, los procedimientos, la documentación, el hardening, y un sin fin de controles y medidas que nos hacen creer que nuestra postura de seguridad es aparentemente infalible. Pero en la realidad puede ser muy diferente, ningún sistema es infalible y ninguna infraestructura es completamente impenetrable. Y sin una experiencia de ataque real que nos permita poner a prueba nuestros procesos de respuesta y de recuperación en caso de vulneración efectiva, nunca podremos madurar nuestra postura de seguridad lo suficiente.

STEP 1.5: Communicate the attack -After identifying the attack, you need to appropriately communicate with your various internal information technology (IT) support teams and/or managers to let them know what is going on, so they can either respond or offer assistance accordingly. A quick message on Microsoft Teams chat would suffice for awareness, tagging subject matter experts (SME's) when a call to action is needed, and calling out the currently affected systems. This will allow others to contribute their ongoing observations of the incident, increase efficiency by preventing duplicate efforts within STEP 1 of the attack identification stage, and help create a more consistent response when communicating with end users.

I know the question is for a post-attack response, but shouldn’t there be more of a focus on preventing the attack in the first place? From a risk management perspective, spending a decent chunk of training budgets and even cybersecurity budgets on effective in-person social engineering, phishing and cybersecurity awareness trainings could save thousands in the long run, not to mention maintaining a strong reputation and trust with customers and stakeholders. Which is better- A company that responded well post-attack or a company that prevented the attack in the first place?