Week 1-7 Cyber Incident Response Discussion Prompts ✓ Solved

Week 1-7 Cyber Incident Response Discussion Prompts: Week 1-

Week 1 Discussions: Stakeholders in Cyber Incident Response Plan — Discuss the roles and importance of three key stakeholders in the development and design of a cyber incident response plan. Fire Alarm and Building Evacuation Plans — Is there value in exercising a cyber incident response plan? Cyber Incident Response Plan Sections — Should the common sections of a cyber incident response plan be organizationally dependent, or should they all be addressed regardless of the organization or its functions?

Week 2 Discussions: Indicator and Precursor — Which is more important: indicators or precursors? Provide examples and describe how to discover them. System Logs — Discuss three types of logs important post-incident, the method and content collected, and anomalies (such as time) that challenge event correlation.

Week 3 Discussions: Key Personnel in Incident Response — Discuss roles and responsibilities of key personnel. RAM vs Volatile Data — Given limited time, would you image RAM or collect volatile data? Explain. Expenses — Discuss at least three expenses associated with incident handling and their impact.

Week 4 Discussions: Permanent File Deletion — As an attacker, why choose to permanently delete files? Given drives' nature, is securely deleting worth the effort? Imaging Disk — Discuss advantages and disadvantages of forensically imaging HDDs and SSDs. Working on original media — Is there ever a point where it's more advantageous to work on original media? Running Captured Disk Image — Can a drive image be run as a live system (VM or hardware)? Advantages for forensic work?

Week 5 Discussions: Common Mistakes in Incident Handling — Select three common mistakes and describe why important; do you agree with all ten? Decision-Making Processes — Choose one critical containment decision and define a situation where it applies; consider volatile and nonvolatile data collection impacts. Containment Strategies — Define three additional criteria important for choosing containment strategies and their implications for volatile and nonvolatile data collection.

Week 6 Discussions: Vulnerability Discovery and Removal — Prioritize listed items under "Vulnerability Discovery and Removal", describe how to locate each item and justify order. Postincident Activities — From malware postincident activities, what lessons learned should be documented? Recommend organizational changes, policies, or refresher training?

Week 7 Discussions: Trusted Toolset — If lacking a trusted toolset during initial collection and time is critical, what would you do and how justify collection actions? Data Tampering or Tool Misuse — Find a case where data tampering or tool misuse prevented or nearly prevented evidence acceptance in court.

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Executive Summary

This synthesis addresses seven weeks of cyber incident response (IR) discussion prompts, integrating stakeholder roles, plan design, detection fundamentals, evidence collection priorities, forensic imaging trade-offs, incident costs, containment decision-making, postincident lessons, tool trustworthiness, and legal risks from tool misuse. Recommendations draw on NIST guidance and forensic best practices to provide a practical, organization-agnostic framework (NIST, 2012; Casey, 2011).

Week 1 — Stakeholders, Exercises, and Plan Scope

Three essential stakeholders are: (1) Incident Response Team lead (technical coordination, playbook execution), (2) Legal/compliance officer (preservation orders, breach notification obligations), and (3) Business continuity and senior management (risk decisions, resource allocation). Each stakeholder influences decisions ranging from containment scope to public disclosure, so early inclusion ensures practicable, lawful actions (NIST, 2012).

Exercising an IR plan is valuable: tabletop and live exercises reveal communication gaps, technical constraints, and escalation thresholds—analogous to fire drills but addressing digital evidence handling and system isolation. Exercises validate runbooks, test logging fidelity, and train personnel to reduce response time and errors (ENISA, 2019).

Plan sections (detection, containment, eradication, recovery, evidence handling, communications, roles) should be present in all organizations but tailored to size and critical assets. Smaller entities may compress roles; large enterprises require detailed escalation matrices. The presence of all sections ensures comprehensive readiness while allowing proportional detail (NIST, 2012).

Week 2 — Indicators vs. Precursors and Logging

Precursors (signs that an incident may occur) are often more strategically valuable for prevention, while indicators (evidence that an incident occurred) are critical for response and attribution. Example: a precursor is an exposed RDP port with brute-force attempts; an indicator is a successful login followed by suspicious process creation. Discover precursors with vulnerability scans and threat hunting; discover indicators with IDS alerts and endpoint telemetry (SANS, 2013).

Three crucial log types post-incident: (1) Endpoint/host logs (process creation, authentication events), (2) Network flow and proxy logs (lateral movement, data exfiltration patterns), and (3) Syslog/Windows Event logs (system changes, service behaviors). Collection methods include centralized logging (SIEM ingestion), secure log transfer (syslog over TLS), and forensic duplication for volatile host data. Time skew and inconsistent timestamps are common correlation challenges; ensure synchronized NTP and record timezone metadata (RFC 3339; NIST, 2012).

Week 3 — Personnel, RAM vs Volatile, and Expenses

Key personnel: IR lead, forensics analyst, system/network administrators, legal/privacy officer, and communications/PR. Responsibilities span containment decisions, evidence preservation, remediation, legal compliance, and stakeholder communication (NIST, 2012).

Given limited time, prioritize imaging RAM (memory) because critical ephemeral artifacts—encryption keys, active network sockets, in-memory malware—are lost on reboot (Halderman et al., 2008; Ligh et al., 2014). If imaging entire RAM is infeasible, collect targeted volatile artifacts (process lists, network connections) using trusted live-response tools, documenting collection order and hash values (Casey, 2011).

Incident expenses include technical remediation (forensics, patching), operational downtime (lost revenue/productivity), and reputational/legal costs (notifications, fines). These costs can cascade; rapid, well-prioritized response and insurance can mitigate long-term damage (ENISA, 2019).

Week 4 — Deletion, Imaging HDDs vs SSDs, and Running Images

Attackers delete files to hinder detection or remove exfiltration artifacts. Secure deletion on modern drives—especially SSDs with wear-leveling—may not reliably erase data; depending on attacker goals, time may be better spent exfiltrating or overwriting critical sectors (Gutmann, 1996). From a defender’s perspective, attempting to recover deleted artifacts is often worthwhile because remnants and metadata persist (Casey, 2011).

HDD imaging is straightforward and forensically sound with bit-for-bit copies; SSDs complicate imaging due to TRIM, wear-leveling, and controller behavior, potentially making some deleted data unrecoverable but also leaving forensic artifacts in controller metadata (Garfinkel, 2010). Working on original media is justified only when live system behavior must be observed and contained with minimal delay; otherwise, work on verified images to preserve evidence integrity (RFC 3227; NIST, 2012).

Captured disk images can be mounted and executed in controlled virtual environments to reproduce attacker behavior and hunt persistent artifacts. Running images as VMs supports dynamic analysis but introduces risk of triggering destructive payloads; always isolate in a sandbox with controlled network simulation (Quick & Choo, 2014).

Week 5 — Common Mistakes, Decision Processes, and Containment Criteria

Common mistakes include: failing to preserve volatile evidence, inadequate documentation of chain of custody, and premature system reboots—each undermines forensic value and legal defensibility (McAfee list; Casey, 2011). The list is useful but can be distilled to preservation, documentation, and communication as core priorities.

Decision example: containment by isolation vs. monitoring in place. If a critical database shows signs of data exfiltration, immediate network isolation may be chosen despite loss of live forensic capture, prioritizing data protection. This decision impacts volatile collection (may lose RAM) and elevates collection need for network logs and endpoint images collected immediately (NIST, 2012).

Additional containment criteria: (1) business criticality of affected assets, (2) legal/regulatory obligations (e.g., HIPAA, GDPR), and (3) impact on evidence preservation. These criteria guide whether to cut network connections, power down systems, or employ live monitoring and influence volatile vs nonvolatile evidence priorities.

Week 6 — Vulnerability Prioritization and Postincident Activities

Prioritize vulnerabilities by exploitability, exposure (internet-facing), business impact, and existence of mitigations. Locate them via authenticated scanning, threat intelligence, and log analysis. Postincident, document root cause analysis, timeline, detection gaps, and recommended policy or architectural changes. Implement policy changes, patching cadence updates, and targeted refresher training to address human and technical weaknesses (ENISA, 2019).

Week 7 — Trusted Toolsets and Tool Misuse

If a trusted toolset is unavailable during time-critical collection, use well-documented native OS artifacts and minimally invasive, widely vetted open-source tools, documenting version and execution steps to justify admissibility. Establish tool provenance and hashing of collected artifacts to protect chain-of-custody (RFC 3227; SANS, 2013).

Cases of tool misuse have led courts to exclude evidence when collection altered or corrupted data or when tools lacked validation—highlighting the need for procedure, testability, and documentation to ensure evidentiary weight (Casey, 2011).

Conclusion

A resilient IR posture blends stakeholder engagement, practiced plans, prioritized detection of precursors and indicators, robust logging, prudent volatile evidence handling, and clear containment criteria. Exercises, documented lessons, trusted tools, and legal coordination reduce costs and improve outcome. Following established guidance (NIST, SANS, ENISA) and preserving forensic rigor ensure both effective remediation and legal defensibility.

References

• Cichonski, P., Millar, T., Grance, T., & Scarfone, K. (2012). Computer Security Incident Handling Guide (NIST SP 800-61r2). National Institute of Standards and Technology. (NIST, 2012)
• Casey, E. (2011). Digital Evidence and Computer Crime: Forensic Science, Computers, and the Internet (3rd ed.). Academic Press. (Casey, 2011)
• Ligh, M. H., Case, A., Levy, J., & Walters, A. (2014). The Art of Memory Forensics: Detecting Malware and Threats in Windows, Linux, and Mac Memory. Wiley. (Ligh et al., 2014)
• RFC 3227. (2002). Guidelines for Evidence Collection and Archiving. Internet Engineering Task Force. (RFC 3227, 2002)
• Gutmann, P. (1996). Secure deletion of data from magnetic and solid-state memory. Proceedings of the 6th USENIX Security Symposium. (Gutmann, 1996)
• Halderman, J. A., et al. (2008). Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys. USENIX Security Symposium. (Halderman et al., 2008)
• Garfinkel, S. L. (2010). Digital Forensics Research: The Next 10 Years. Digital Investigation, 7, S64–S73. (Garfinkel, 2010)
• SANS Institute. (2013). Incident Handler's Handbook. SANS Reading Room. (SANS, 2013)
• Quick, D., & Choo, K.-K. R. (2014). Cloud storage forensics: Technical challenges, solutions and comparative analysis. Digital Investigation, 13, S24–S34. (Quick & Choo, 2014)
• ENISA. (2019). Good Practice Guide for Incident Management. European Union Agency for Cybersecurity. (ENISA, 2019)