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1 - Preparation: The first and most important step is preparation. SOC teams must have an incident response plan in place, which includes documented procedures, response playbooks, communication protocols, and defined roles for team members. Continuous training and drills ensure that analysts are familiar with the tools and methods needed to respond to incidents quickly. Security tools, such as firewalls, SIEM systems, and endpoint protection, must be configured correctly, regularly updated, and tested.

 

2 - Identification: This phase involves detecting and identifying potential security incidents. SOC analysts monitor security tools, including SIEM, IDS/IPS, and EDR, to observe unusual behaviour or anomalies that could indicate an attack. Once an anomaly is detected, the SOC team must determine whether it is a false positive or an actual incident. This requires a thorough analysis of logs, network traffic, and other data points to confirm the nature of the event.

 

3 - Containment: Once an incident is identified, the immediate priority is containment to prevent the threat from spreading further. Containment strategies can be short-term (immediate containment, such as isolating affected systems) or long-term (more permanent solutions after the incident has been fully analysed). The SOC team works to limit the scope of the damage while gathering as much information as possible to understand the full impact of the breach.

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4 - Eradication: After the threat is contained, the next step is to remove the root cause of the attack. This could involve patching vulnerabilities, terminating malicious processes, deleting malware, or taking compromised systems offline for further analysis. Eradication ensures that the attacker no longer has access to the environment.

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5 - Recovery: Recovery involves restoring and validating the integrity of affected systems. This may include reconfiguring or reinstalling systems, restoring from backups, and ensuring that all security patches are applied. Monitoring efforts are heightened post-recovery to detect any lingering threats or attempts to re-compromise the environment.

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6 - Lessons Learned: After the incident has been resolved, a post-incident review is conducted to analyse what went wrong and how future incidents can be prevented. The SOC team documents the entire process, identifies any gaps in the response plan, and updates procedures to strengthen defences for the future.

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Incident response is an ongoing process that relies on strong preparation, effective teamwork, and the use of advanced tools and techniques to protect the organisation from evolving cyber threats.