Incident Response Training and Testing

(OBJ 4.8)

Training

• Education to ensure employees and staff understand incident response processes, procedures, and priorities
• Training should be tailored to different roles (e.g., first responders, managers, executives, end users) with specific needs
  • End user training includes teaching them how to report incidents and remedial training for those who make mistakes
  • First Responder
    • Procedures
    • Machine re-image
    • Removing a malware
    • Change configuration settings
  • Manager or Executive
    • Risk vs. Reward
    • Decision-making and communication
    • Law enforcement and media
  • End User
    • Report suspected incident occurring
    • Remedial training
      • Identify specific issues in the future
• Capture and incorporate lessons learned from previous incidents into training to prevent their recurrence
• Soft skills and relationship building are important in high-functioning incident response teams
  • Blend technical and soft skills

Testing

• Practical exercise of incident response procedures to ensure the practical application of knowledge
• Testing helps assess the effectiveness of your response procedures
• It can be costly, complex, and resource-intensive, depending on the scenario
• Example:
  • Full scale exercise for a large scale data breach
  • Multiple sites around the world were involved
  • Provided a precise verification that everyone knew what to do and was done correctly

Tabletop Exercise (TTX)

• A theoretical exercise that presents an incident response scenario
  • Exercises simulate incidents within a control framework
• Discussion based Participants discuss and role-play their response actions
• Cost-effective but lacks hands-on experience
• Useful for exploring decision-making and response planning
• Example:
  • Plant a situation and take turns to say what should be done
• You can break up people into red team and blue team, attackers vs. defenders
  • Then based on what the blue team says, the red team says to do a counterattack and so on.
  • Continue back and forth several rounds until we can see what the effects are
  • Fosters better solutions by considering attacker and defender perspectives

Penetration Testing (Pen Test)

• Simulates network intrusion based on threat scenarios
• A red team (attacker) attempts network intrusion based on a specific threat modeling scenario
• Rules of engagement and clear methodology are established beforehand
  • Important because there are rules to follow for a fair game
• Popular tools and operating systems
  • Metasploit
  • Cobalt Strike
  • Kali Linux
  • ParrotOS
  • Commando OS
• Awareness of these tools is crucial, as they can be used by both penetration testers and attackers

Simulation

• Goes beyond tabletop discussions, involving realistic, hands-on scenarios
• Mimics actual incidents
  • Simple
    • Phishing attacks,
    • Ransomware infections
  • Complex
    • Multi-stage attacks
    • Data breaches in coordination with external parties
• Tests technical skills, decision-making under pressure, and effective communication within and outside an org.
• Align simulations with the organization's threat landscape and risk profile
• Identifies gaps in incident response plans, improves team coordination, and ensures role clarity during real incidents
• Regularly incorporating simulations improves an organization's readiness for cybersecurity incidents