Best Incident Response Tools and Software

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With major cybersecurity incidents an almost daily occurrence, organizations need an incident response plan for the likelihood that they will someday be breached. And more than ever, they also need an incident response service that can step in to help clean up those messes.

Despite all the cybersecurity defenses in enterprises, the human element matters the most, as phishing attacks remain the top avenue of incursion, accounting for more than 85% of all breaches, according to the annual Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report. With 13% of human-related breaches containing ransomware and 10% of ransomware attacks costing organizations an average of $1 million, IT security teams need to be prepared for the worst.

That’s where incident response software and services come in. Incident response is focused on how best to deal with an incident once it occurs. The whole idea is to have a systematic approach to incidents rather than acting haphazardly. Incident response tools can help implement incident response plans and elevate response plans from a manual to an automated basis, sandboxing threats and shutting down ports and access and the like. But even then, manual actions remain important, and that’s where incident response plans and services come in.

The functions contained within incident response tools and services vary widely from vendor to vendor. But these core functions are present in most products:

  • Ability to instantly deploy and gain visibility across the environment, including Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems
  • Remediation capabilities across environmental components to implement corrective actions as quickly as possible rather than waiting for time-consuming manual actions, perhaps over hundreds or thousands of devices and components
  • Log review is useful as well, but real-time visibility is key
  • Post-breach investigations
  • Ransomware, virus, and malware removal
  • Recovery of systems and reestablishment of services and websites

See our picks for best ransomware recovery services and removal tools

Top Incident Response Tools

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Check Point Incident Response

Check Point’s Incident Response (IR) service can be broken down into several components. It offers incident response retainers for reactive incident engagements as well as proactive engagements via consulting. Those consulting services include: tabletop exercises; IR planning (including policy and playbook review and creation around threats); maturity & readiness assessments; and more advanced services such as internal compromise and threat assessments that look at the network, logs, endpoints, Active Directory, and email (on premises or in the cloud), threat hunting engagements, and external attack surface mapping analysis for a company’s digital assets.

Key Differentiators

  • The Check Point Incident Response Team (CPIRT) Service helps prepare for and respond to any security breach with 24/7 dedicated experts to help speed recovery and return to business as usual. This includes real-time remediation assistance, rule-based and protection activation recommendations, traffic and attack analysis, forensic analytics lab access, scheduled log analysis of identified critical systems, and configuration change recommendations for third-party systems and service providers.
  • Complete Incident Handling: Check Point can handle the entire incident lifecycle from triage containment and remediation, with detailed documentation and reports.
  • Check Point has intelligence sharing arrangements with many global intelligence and infrastructure providers, local and national law enforcement, and others.
  • The service is vendor agnostic, with global 24x7x365 incident response analysts around the world.
  • Direct access to Check Point Research & Development, aiding in Zero Day threat identification.
  • Handles upwards of 3,000 or more cases per year.
  • More than 250 professionals, including advanced security experts, reverse engineers, and malware analysts.
  • Utilizes standardized frameworks for incident response such as NIST and ISO.

Cynet

The Cynet Incident Response service includes deployment of the Cynet 360 agent to gain visibility across the environment, including hosts, files, networks, and users. It is managed by a team of incident responders to resolve the problem and get the business restored back to normal.

Key Differentiators

  • It combines deep security analysis experience together with Cynet 360 investigative and security technology.
  • A 24/7 security team acts as an extended team for the organization, leading any required analysis, ensuring that nothing is overlooked, and generating the results needed.
  • Cynet 360 can be used post-resolution to protect systems against future attacks.
  • The Cynet 360 agent can be deployed to over 5,000 endpoints within an hour.
  • Cynet 360 provides visibility beyond the endpoint to networks and users to gain the necessary visibility for automated incident response.
  • Executive summaries and reports that can be exported for consumption by other systems or to manually update systems across the environment.
  • The full Cynet Prevention & Detection platform leverages Cynet Sensor Fusion to provide integrated antivirus, endpoint detection and response, network analytics, deception and user behavioral analytics.

Mandiantmandiant google

The Mandiant Automated Defense module – soon to become part of Google – combines data from the security stack with data science and machine learning capabilities to triage alerts, automatically eliminating events that don’t matter, and revealing the ones that do. Its extended detection and response (XDR) engine uses decision automation to recall events that occurred in the past, correlating with threat intelligence to enrich incidents for escalation and remediation.

Key Differentiators

  • Mandiant Automated Defense increases scalability, consistency, and accuracy to augment SOC teams, improving detection and reducing attacker dwell times.
  • Mandiant investigator expertise and threat intelligence are delivered through the Mandiant Intel Grid.
  • Deliver detection and response capabilities at scale with a software-as-a-service approach that does not require the writing of rules or playbooks.
  • Weave together alerts and data from a variety of security control categories, data repositories and threat intelligence vendors to determine the likelihood of malicious and actionable threats.
  • Helps security analysts reduce monotonous tasks by automating alert analysis, reducing the number of false positives, and highlighting alerts that matter.
  • SOC teams can weave together data silos and integrate with SIEM/SOAR tools.
  • The overall Mandiant platform – Mandiant Advantage – encompasses extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities with breach intelligence, threat intelligence, and security validation.
  • Works with existing security controls.

Secureworks

Secureworks Taegis XDR is available as software or as a managed service. It is built on the Taegis security analytics platform, using data science techniques to expose adversaries that would otherwise go undetected. A combination of machine and deep learning that are trained using threat intelligence and user data powers the behavioral threat analytics.

Key Differentiators

  • The software includes built-in detection.
  • Automated containment actions across endpoint, network, and cloud environments.
  • Fuses human and machine intelligence to improve security.
  • ManagedXDR enables the team to deal with an increasing workload and threat volume.
  • Collaborate on hunts, chat with analysts, and periodically assess the security posture.
  • Cloud-native solution that complements existing infrastructure by correlating events from multiple security tools.
  • Identify previously unknown threats, eliminate noise, and speed up investigations with analytics-based detectors that are enriched with curated threat intelligence by the Secureworks Counter Threat Unit.

Sygnia

Sygnia can investigate, contain, and defeat attacks within the network, while minimizing impact and enabling effective recovery. Its forensics and incident response capabilities are designed to counter the spectrum of attacks, resolve incidents, and support risk management and business recovery.

Key Differentiators

  • Support for forensic diagnostics, reverse engineering, and evidence preservation, including host, network, mobile, cloud or any other form of digital data.
  • Manage uncertainty by determining if security alerts constitute a critical risk.
  • Obtain recommendations to address vulnerabilities and mitigate threats.
  • Crisis management support.
  • Retainer contracts offer standby support, from forensic triage to handling a full-scale cyber event.
  • Assess and enhance the ability to respond to and sustain cyberattacks.
  • Close gaps and improve preparation to manage the complex undertaking and intense pressure of a cyber breach.
  • Proactively hunt attacks within the network, and identify and neutralize dormant and active threats at an early stage.
  • Sygnia’s Advanced Compromise Assessment process establishes a base of security.

Herjavec Group

Managed Detection & Response (MDR) services from Herjavec Group (HG) analyze packets and system processes in real time, augmenting an existing managed security service. The benefits include threat detection, threat hunting, and technology-specific experts’ hands-on involvement in the environment to expand beyond preventative security strategies.

Key Differentiators

  • The HG MDR practice combines behavioral and anomaly detection with added intelligence from endpoint detection and response platforms.
  • The HG SOC operations monitor network, systems, and data, 24/7/365.
  • High-fidelity alerting, improved threat detection, and expert-level response.
  • Around the clock security event monitoring, triage & escalation.
  • Threat disruption across platforms.
  • Network security monitoring coupled with management of best of breed EDR or XDR solutions, cloud environments, and containers.
  • Digital forensics and incident response emergency services.
  • Managed phishing service.

BAE Systems

BAE Systems is a supplier of cyber, intelligence, and security capabilities to government agencies, as well as cyber and network security capabilities to the enterprise. It protects air, maritime, land, and cyber domains.

Key Differentiators

  • Has a workforce of about 90,000 people in more than 40 countries.
  • Emergency Cyber Incident Response services combine technical skills with strategic guidance to ensure the organization makes the right decisions at the right times to limit the impact of the attack.
  • In-house developed tools are used to discover the critical facts.
  • Visibility into malicious behavior.
  • If a breach of security has already made the headlines or attracted regulator attention, the BAE team can help manage internal and external stakeholders, as well as the press.
  • Centers of excellence exist in the UK, U.S., and Australia.
  • Can rapidly deploy expert personnel onsite.
  • Founding and certified member of the NCSC Certified Incident Response Scheme and CREST certified to provide cyber incident response services to government, critical national infrastructure and, other operators of nationally significant networks.

Cybriant

CybriantXDR combines machine learning and artificial intelligence with experienced oversight to identify and terminate malicious software before it can execute. It also alerts the organization only when a credible threat is detected.

Key Differentiators

  • 24/7 security monitoring and analysis.
  • By using AI technology, attacks can be detected and prevented before they can fully execute.
  • When a threat is detected, it can contain and mitigate threats from diverse modes of attack.
  • Zero-day and machine learning-based prevention.
  • Analysis of both internal and external traffic.
  • Active vulnerability scanning.
  • Integrated threat intelligence.
  • Ongoing regulatory compliance support.
  • Managed SIEM with 24/7 security monitoring and analysis with actionable cyber threat intelligence.
  • Stop threats at the endpoint with Cybriant’s MDR Service.
Drew Robb Avatar

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