Incident Response Plan for FromThePage

This document discusses the steps taken during a security instance on FromThePage.com

1. The person who discovers the incident will contact Sara, Ben, and our system administrator. Sara or Ben should be the first point of contact, to be contacted via cell phone 24/7. Sara will designate an owner for the incident; with Ben as backup.

2. The incident owner will create a github issue to track forensic data and actions taken and include the following:

    a) Is the equipment affected business critical? 
    b) What is the severity of the potential impact? 
    c) Name of system being targeted, along with operating system, IP address, and location. 
    d) IP address and any information about the origin of the attack. 
    e) Owner will categorize the thread into one of the following categories.  Due to the nature of FromThePage, threats are not expected to be in Category one or two.
        i) Category one - A threat to public safety or life. 
        ii) Category two - A threat to sensitive data 
        iii) Category three - A threat to computer systems 
        iv) Category four - A disruption of services 
   

3. Contacted members of the response team will meet or discuss the situation over the telephone or slack and determine a response strategy.

    a) Is the incident real or perceived? 
    b) Is the incident still in progress? 
    c) What data or property is threatened and how critical is it? 
    d) What is the impact on the business should the attack succeed? Minimal, serious, or critical? 
    e) What system or systems are targeted, where are they located physically and on the network? 
    f) Is the incident inside the trusted network? 
    g) Is the response urgent? 
    h) Can the incident be quickly contained? 
    i) Will the response alert the attacker and do we care? 
    j) What type of incident is this? Example: virus, worm, intrusion, abuse, damage. 
   

4. Team members will perform appropriate research and remediate the problem.

5. Team members will use forensic techniques, including reviewing system logs, looking for gaps in logs, reviewing intrusion detection logs, and interviewing witnesses and the incident victim to determine how the incident was caused. Only authorized personnel should be performing interviews or examining evidence, and the authorized personnel may vary by situation and the organization.

6. Team members will recommend changes to prevent the occurrence from happening again or infecting other systems.

7. Upon management approval, the changes will be implemented.

8. Team members will restore the affected system(s) to the uninfected state. They may do any or more of the following:

    a) Re-install the affected system(s) from scratch and restore data from backups if necessary. Preserve evidence before doing this. 
    b) Make users change passwords if passwords may have been sniffed. 
    c) Be sure the system has been hardened by turning off or uninstalling unused services. 
    d) Be sure the system is fully patched. 
    e) Be sure real time virus protection and intrusion detection is running. 
    f) Be sure the system is logging the correct events and to the proper level. 
   

9. Documentation—the following shall be documented:

    a) How the incident was discovered. 
    b) The category of the incident. 
    c) How the incident occurred, whether through email, firewall, etc. 
    d) Where the attack came from, such as IP addresses and other related information about the attacker. 
    e) What the response plan was. 
    f) What was done in response? 
    g) Whether the response was effective. 
   

10. Evidence Preservation—make copies of logs, email, and other communication. Keep lists of witnesses. Keep evidence as long as necessary to complete prosecution and beyond in case of an appeal.

11. Assess damage and cost—assess the damage to the organization and estimate both the damage cost and the cost of the containment efforts.

12. Review response and update policies—plan and take preventative steps so the intrusion can't happen again.

    a) Consider whether an additional policy could have prevented the intrusion. 
    b) Consider whether a procedure or policy was not followed which allowed the intrusion, and then consider what could be changed to ensure that the procedure or policy is followed in the future. 
    c) Was the incident response appropriate? How could it be improved? 
    d) Was every appropriate party informed in a timely manner? 
    e) Were the incident-response procedures detailed and did they cover the entire situation? How can they be improved? 
    f) Have changes been made to prevent a re-infection? Have all systems been patched, systems locked down, passwords changed, anti-virus updated, email policies set, etc.? 
    g) Have changes been made to prevent a new and similar infection? 
    h) Should any security policies be updated? 
    i) What lessons have been learned from this experience?