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What Is incident response software?

Incident response software is a type of cybersecurity tool that helps organizations plan out their process for if and when a breach occurs.

The software gives businesses a place to identify everyone involved in the response process, what their specific roles and responsibilities will be, and their contact information, so members of the team can easily access it during a breach. Additionally, it will help businesses create an inventory of all their assets, including servers and endpoints, and rank them in order of importance to identify where the incident response protocols should start.

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Types of incident response plans

There are two types of incident response plans, and not all incident response software may include both. Some of these steps are similar, so it typically comes down to organizational preference to determine which one they’ll use.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) plan includes four steps:

  1. Preparation
  2. Detection & analysis
  3. Containment, eradication, & recovery
  4. Post-incident activity

The SysAdmin, Audit, Network, and Security (SANS) plan includes six steps:

  1. Preparation
  2. Identification
  3. Containment
  4. Eradication
  5. Recovery

What are some incident response software features?

Incident response software should provide a centralized management console for all of the processes and actions related to the incident. This keeps everyone in the loop about what they’ve already completed and prevents them from duplicating work while the clock is ticking.

The system should also provide notifications to alert the team of new tickets and update them on the status of each. And because lessons learned and post-incident activity are part of both types of plans, organizations need incident response software that offers reports to help them improve their processes before the next breach.

The incident response software an organization chooses should easily integrate with its SIEM and threat intelligence software, either through APIs or native integrations, to provide greater visibility into the threat it faces. Additionally, advanced incident response tools should also include workflow automation to reduce the likelihood of human error and make it easier to retrieve and update information in the plan.

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