Incident Response (IR)
Incident Response is the process of detecting, investigating, and remediating security incidents. It includes containment to stop ongoing attacks, investigation to determine impact, and remediation to remove the attacker and restore systems.
# WHAT TEAMS RUN INTO
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Incident response requires fast decision-making under uncertainty. Investigators must decide to isolate systems, reset passwords, and notify customers without complete information about attack scope and impact.
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Incident response coordination spans teams. Coordinating security, engineering, operations, legal, PR, and management during an incident is chaotic. Decision authority is unclear and decisions get revisited.
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Containment requires identity decisions. When responding to identity-based attacks, teams must decide which credentials to revoke, which sessions to terminate, and which access to remove — decisions that affect legitimate users who might be using the same credentials.
# WHY IT MATTERS
Incident response is where security theory meets operational reality. Incident response plans are written in times of calm and executed in times of crisis. Organizations with strong identity security incident response playbooks can respond quickly to identity attacks and minimize damage. Organizations without playbooks improvise during incidents and make mistakes that spread damage.