Top 10 Incident Response Tools for Your SOCs

Source: IBM

Key features:

• Automated discovery and monitoring of:
  • Physical components: Hosts or machines, containers, clusters
  • Logical components: Services, endpoints, application perspectives or applications
  • Business components: Business process (e.g. a “buying” trace for capturing data in e-commerce, followed by an order trace in ER),
• Logging: With logging, Instana collects application and service logs automatically and correlates them with metrics, and traces.
• Pipeline feedback
• Root cause analysis: Investigate the quality of service issues of your applications including:
  • Issues
  • Incidents 
  • Changes

Pros

• Root cause analysis: Users appreciate the platform’s ability to perform in-depth root cause analysis, helping to identify the exact cause of incidents.
• High-quality customer support: Users report positive experiences with responsive customer support.
• Custom filtering: Users can effectively filter errors and alerts by specific parameters.

Cons

• Learning curve: While many find it easy to use, some users indicate a learning curve exists for those unfamiliar with APM tools.
• Need for tutorials: Several users have suggested that more tutorials or documentation would help ease the learning process for beginners.
• Annual pricing model: Users have noted that the annual pricing model requires careful planning for scaling.

Cynet – All-in-One Cybersecurity Platform

The Cynet security platform is a unified solution for several breach protections. Cynet aims to provide visibility into four areas: endpoints, users, network & files.

The platform combines endpoint protection and EDR/XDR, network analytics, user behavior analytics, SOAR, CSPM, and vulnerability management. The platform also offers a free 14-day trial.

Once installed, users can handle vulnerabilities and compliance issues. This includes:

1. OS Updates
2. Out-of-date apps
3. Validation of security policies
4. Unauthorized apps
5. Out-of-date apps

Using numerous layers, Cynet may block the execution of risky processes in runtime.

• Threat intelligence –  to gain insights with over 30 live feeds of Indicators of Compromise.
• Known malware – to avoid malware execution, identify known signatures.
• Machine learning – based Next-Generation Antivirus (NGAV) – to identify harmful properties by examining files before execution with independent machine learning.
• Memory access control – to secure crucial memory locations so that only legitimate processes can have access.
• Behavioral analysis – to discover and terminate malicious behavior by monitoring the incident response process at runtime.

Pros 

• Effective EDR/XDR: Users highlight the strength of Cynet’s EDR/XDR features, with some saying the EDR is superior to other antivirus products. It provides strong behavioral analysis to detect and prevent malware.
• Efficient support: Users say they received Quick responses from the CyOps team.
• SIEM integration: Integrations into existing SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) systems are smooth.
• Visibility and threat mitigation: Users note that Cynet provides excellent visibility into threats for detailed forensic analysis.
• Broad coverage: Cynet is appreciated for offering broad protection, including ransomware prevention, threat monitoring, and incident response. 

Cons

• High resource usage: Some users report that Cynet can consume significant system resources (e.g., “high memory utilization), particularly when scanning large networks.
• Cost: The platform is considered more expensive than some competitors.
• Performance issues: A few users have experienced slowdowns or performance lags. (e.g., “Performance slowdowns,” “Slower scans on large networks”).
• Limited third-party integration: While Cynet integrates well with many systems, some users find that third-party integrations can be time-consuming or challenging.

Splunk On-Call

Splunk On-Call is an incident management tool with automated scheduling and intelligent routing capabilities. It expands the alerting and messaging capabilities of all Splunk products. This allows you to use your team’s existing contact, organizing, and escalation policies for Splunk alerts.

Splunk On-Call serves as a central point for information flow during the incident lifecycle. This helps security teams resolve events faster, reducing the impact of downtime.

Pros

• Custom API solutions: Working with the API is intuitive, and it offers numerous interfaces with default tools such as Zendesk.
• Ease of use: Easy to process tickets in both the mobile app and Web page
• Android mobile app: The Android app is appreciated for its usability.

Cons

• On-call calendar: Customers indicate the on-call calendaring is lacking, and you can’t make by-hour, or by-day schedules.
• Single sign-on support: Analysts express that single sign-on (SSO) support can be improved.
• Slack integration: Users expect smoother Slack integration.

TheHive

TheHive is an open-source security incident management software. With TheHive you can synchronize it with one or more Malware Information Sharing Platform (MISP) instances to initiate investigations based on events. 

You can also export the results of an investigation as an MISP event to assist your colleagues in detecting and responding to assaults you have encountered. Furthermore, when TheHive is used in conjunction with other observable analysis tools, security analysts can quickly examine tens, if not hundreds, of observables.

Pros

• Workflow customization: Reviewers say TheHive’s open-source nature is adaptable to their workflow needs.
• Incident management: Several users appreciated the tool’s ability to customize workflow to remediate security incidents. 
• Integrations: Ease of integration with security information event management systems (SIEM), and external malware information providers (MISPs).

Cons

• Cortec integrations: Some users found it challenging to integrate TheHive with Cortex.
• Lacking KPI dashboards: The product lacks default dashboards to monitor the performance and execution of the team.
• Slow product updates: Users raise their concerns about slow product updates.

Incident response and OODA Loop

The OODA Loop is a decision-making paradigm divided into four stages: observation (O), orientation (O), decision (D), and action (A). This sequential method assists organizations in making effective incident response decisions by cycling through these stages.

1. Observe: Provides visibility into network traffic, operating systems, apps, and other elements that can assist build a baseline for the environment and offer real-time event data.
2. Orient: Includes detailed contextual information and intelligence on existing threats and the types of attacks they are carrying out.
3. Decide: Refers to both real-time and forensic (after the event) information about threats that can assist security teams in making informed decisions on how to respond.
4. Act: Consists of actions to take to address the threats, and reduce their risk and impact on the business.

How to use OODA Loop in your incident response plan?

Organizations require solutions that enable automated visibility and control to maintain network resilience. This applies to preventative methods like MFA and granular access controls (e.g. RBAC), and reactive measures such as monitoring, and alerting.

Multiple tools can help with reaction efforts across the OODA cycle. Most tools are classified into one of the following categories:

See each step of the OODA loop and how technology fits into it:

Observe

This phase of the OODA loop necessitates using tools to establish a baseline, define normal behavior, and identify anomalies. Given what’s involved, this category includes a significant number of tools:

Orient

The Orient step of the OODA cycle uses tools to provide context and information on the severity of security occurrences. See the following tools that can assist the orient phase:

Decide

During the Decide step, important company decisions are taken, such as whether or not to engage in response activities. This step refers back to the previous two processes – observing and orienting – to ensure teams have all of the knowledge they need to make informed decisions.

Act

This is the process in which teams use an incident response and security tools to implement decisions made during the “decide phase”. The tools utilized here include the following:

What is incident response?

Incident response refers to an organization’s procedures and technologies for identifying and responding to cyber threats, security breaches, or cyberattacks. A formal incident response plan allows cybersecurity teams to mitigate or prevent damage.

Ideally, an organization establishes incident response methods and technology in a formal incident response plan (IRP) that outlines how various cyberattacks should be discovered and handled.

What are security incidents?

A security incident, or security event, is any digital or physical intrusion that compromises the security, reliability, or accessibility of an organization’s information systems or sensitive data.

Security incidents can range from deliberate cyberattacks by hackers or unauthorized users to unintentional breaches of IT security policy. Some of the most typical incidents:

Incident response tools automate and provide guidelines to remediate the process of addressing security breaches. Companies use these tools to monitor networks, infrastructure, and endpoints to detect intrusions.

Incident management tools can remedy issues that develop after attackers have evaded firewalls and other security systems. They alert SOCs of unauthorized access to apps and devices and detect several different types of malware.

Incident response systems function similarly to security information and event management (SIEM) tools, however, SIEM products provide broader IT visibility and analysis options.

Further reading

External Links