Thanks to a general shift towards remote work, cybercriminals have had a golden opportunity to breach business and government networks, thus exploiting unsecured home setups, lax access controls, and the blurred boundaries between personal and professional devices. The recent proliferation of generative AI technologies has also allowed these malicious actors to dramatically scale up their attacks, making them a bigger threat than they’ve ever been.
Ultimately, avoiding attacks completely is a bit of a fool’s errand. The massive increase in scope and scale means that they are an inevitable threat to organisations of all sizes. Hackers no longer have to focus resources on government offices or big businesses. Technological advancements have allowed them to cast much wider nets, targeting vulnerable small businesses and even individuals.
The old paradigm of prevention is no longer enough. Today, containment and eradication—activities that occur after a breach—must receive equal attention. Here are vital incident response solutions and tips your business should know to handle breach containment and eradication effectively:
Containment is extremely time-sensitive. Arguments and confusion over responsibility and necessary action will only allow the damage to spread. The quicker you can isolate compromised systems and restrict access, the more damage you can avoid.
Unfortunately, organisations often lose valuable time debating the next steps or waiting for executive sign-off. That’s why sensible, predefined response protocols are necessary. If you don’t have a documented response plan, consider working with an expert team like the people at Network Edge to bring one to fruition.
Generally speaking, there are two phases of containment. Short-term containment focuses on stopping the bleeding. This may include taking affected servers offline, disabling breached accounts, and blocking malicious traffic, among other activities. These are what we often think of when we consider containment.
Long-term containment, on the other hand, has different goals. It aims to maintain operations in a secure environment while preserving forensic evidence for regulatory purposes or for assessing future responses.
Both types of activities are essential for credible threat containment. Failing to do both may open up the possibility of a more serious breach not long after the current one.
Without clear messaging, teams may duplicate each other’s efforts or lead to actions that spread the breach further. While an incident response plan may prevent this from happening, a defined communications strategy that keeps key departments and decision-makers in the loop without overwhelming them with technical details will also be important.
You might think you’ve dealt with the problem once you remove malware or reset credentials. However, true eradication means completely removing the root cause. Without this diligence, the same threat may reemerge soon after.
After the initial eradication, make an effort to identify how the threat succeeded and fix the root vulnerabilities. Don’t neglect to scan for signs of lateral movement within your network.
Every action taken during containment and eradication should be documented. Not only will regulators and insurers require it, but your internal team may need a reference for future breaches. Make it a priority to maintain logs of system changes, who made decisions, and a timeline of important events during incidents
Many data breaches involve external command-and-control servers or data exfiltration attempts. Knowing that, your containment strategy should include measures such as:
These are just some of the steps you can take to sever the attacker’s access and prevent further damage during the eradication phase.
While automated detection and response tools are invaluable for detecting suspicious activities at scale, they are not a substitute for human expertise. Malicious actors are nothing if not clever, and you need a skilled human to understand and match their creativity. Eradication also requires analysis and weighted decision-making—things that should not be left entirely to automated tools.
Some sophisticated breaches involve delayed threats. This can include things like malware set to activate weeks later or access tokens issued to dormant systems. Remember that systems must be rechecked regularly after a successful breach.
If you don’t contain and eradicate efficiently or document what you did, you could face serious penalties under New Zealand’s Privacy Act 2020 or similar laws that apply in your areas of operation. Engage legal counsel and compliance officers when you write out your incident response plans to ensure every step meets your obligations.
Regular simulations and tabletop exercises will help your team act faster when a real incident occurs. Make sure your internal team and third-party providers participate in these drills so that they gain the confidence to act decisively during a real breach.
The time immediately after eliminating a breach is a valuable opportunity that shouldn’t be wasted. After you restore systems from clean backups, change credentials, close vulnerabilities, and notify affected stakeholders, always educate your staff with lessons learned from the event. This will help keep lessons from being lost in the chaos and leave your organisation more secure than ever.
Strong network defences are not just about preventing attacks or even regulatory compliance. The rapid rise of AI-assisted cyberattacks means that a successful breach is probably just a matter of time, requiring you to have a plan that goes beyond just containment and eradication. You must also think about what comes next.
Planning, practice, communication, and expert support will all help your business bounce back, as strong as ever. Get in touch with the team at Network Edge now, and we’ll guide your containment, eradication, and recovery efforts towards credible and lasting success.
