Day-One Playbook: 5 Steps After a Cyberattack

Minutes matter after a cyberattack. Act fast, but be methodical. Recent reports show attackers progressing from initial access to lateral movement 22% faster year over year, with average breakout at 48 minutes and some as quick as 27 minutes. Meanwhile, many organizations still take around 241 days to detect and contain a breach—shorter lifecycles can save millions. The first 24–48 hours set the tone for outcomes.

Your day-one response in 5 steps

1. Activate your incident response plan and assemble the team

• Trigger your prebuilt IR plan immediately.
• Convene a cross‑functional group: security/IT, legal, HR, PR/communications, executive leadership, and relevant business owners.
• Establish roles, a secure communications channel, and a clear decision-maker.

2. Scope the incident and preserve evidence

• Determine entry point, affected accounts, systems, networks, and data.
• Map the blast radius and identify any lateral movement or data exfiltration.
• Document every action; maintain strict chain of custody for potential legal or law-enforcement needs.
• Notify relevant authorities as required by regulation and jurisdiction.

3. Contain without destroying evidence

• Isolate impacted systems from the network and internet; do not power them off.
• Disconnect and protect backups (keep them offline and immutable if possible).
• Disable remote access, reset VPN and privileged credentials, and rotate keys/tokens.
• Use security controls to block command-and-control traffic and known malicious indicators.

4. Eradicate and recover

• Perform forensic analysis to understand tactics, techniques, and procedures from initial access through lateral movement and any encryption or exfiltration.
• Remove malware, backdoors, rogue accounts, persistence mechanisms, and other indicators of compromise.
• Restore from known-good, offline backups; verify system integrity before reconnecting to production.
• Harden as you rebuild: enforce least privilege, stronger authentication, network segmentation, and tighter monitoring. Consider trusted partners or tools (including ESET solutions) to accelerate restoration.

5. Communicate, comply, and learn

• Coordinate accurate, timely updates to regulators, customers, partners, and suppliers. Let PR and legal lead external messaging.
• Conduct a post-incident review: what worked, what lagged, and what to fix in detection, response, and communication.
• Update IR plans, playbooks, escalation paths, controls, and training. Drill regularly to build muscle memory. If 24/7 monitoring is challenging, consider a managed detection and response (MDR) service.

Bottom line: You can’t guarantee prevention, but you can dramatically limit damage with a rehearsed, cross-functional, and evidence-driven response.

Source: WeLiveSecurity