Cloud Security Incident Response

Your AWS IAM credentials are compromised and being used by a threat actor. What do you do? Here's your step-by-step playbook 🔐 If you’ve ever wondered how to actually handle an IAM credential exposure incident in AWS, here’s a cheat sheet you’ll want to keep handy. 🔍 1. ANALYSIS: Validate alerts and credential ownership + Who owns the exposed credentials? Is it even one of your accounts? 🔍 2. ANALYSIS: Scope the incident and inventory affected resources + Validate this isn't a false positive + What was exploited, and by what tool or method? + What resources were touched? 🔍 3. ANALYSIS: Determine business impact + Answer critical questions like: "What data was accessed, and what is its classification?" "Is there any indication the data was exfiltrated?" "Is this an inside or outside threat actor?" etc... 🛑 4. CONTAINMENT: Stop the bleeding How you do this depends on many factors so please refer to the cheat sheet, but as an example: 1. Disable IAM access keys 2. Verify 3. Lock down access of affected IAM users 4. Other relevant containment steps 🛑 5. ERADICATION: Remove the threat + Delete affected resources if/when possible (think legal holds, further investigations, etc) + Apply security updates and harden 🔁 6. RECOVERY: Restore operations + If/as needed (ie: re-create destroyed resources, restore data, restore legitimate access, etc...) 🔁 7. POST-INCIDENT: Learn and improve + Automate containment and eradication steps with CLI/SDK + Save investigation queries for future use + Enable relevant alerts Playbooks like these should be in every cloud security team's toolkit. Of course, this is just a template and starting point. Your organization is different and you'll need to tweak it for that. But hopefully this helps! #AWSSecurity #IncidentResponse #BlueTeam #CloudSecurity #AWSCommunityBuilders

🚨 NEW RESOURCE: SOC Incident Response Playbooks — 20+ Real-World Scenarios & Step-by-Step Runbooks 🛡️🔥 If you work in a SOC, handle incident response, or lead threat detection, this comprehensive playbook collection is worth your time. It’s a practical, ready-to-use guide that maps real-world attacks to actionable response workflows. 📘 What’s Inside 20+ detailed playbooks covering ransomware, insider threats, DDoS, data breaches, web app attacks, phishing, cloud account compromise, and more MITRE ATT&CK mapping for each scenario (so you know exactly what TTPs to watch for) Step-by-step actions across all phases — from detection to recovery Tool recommendations for each stage: SIEM, SOAR, EDR/XDR, NDR, WAF, CSPM, DLP, and forensics tools KPIs & SLAs for detection, containment, and recovery — to make incident handling measurable 🧠 Example Highlights 🦠 Ransomware: Isolate infected hosts, disable lateral movement, collect volatile memory, validate clean backups before restore. ☁️ Cloud Compromise: Revoke sessions, rotate access keys, reset MFA, and review unusual login patterns. 🌐 DNS Tunneling / C2: Monitor long subdomains and suspicious payloads in DNS traffic, enforce egress filtering, and trigger automatic blocking rules. 💼 Business Email Compromise (BEC): Reset credentials, audit inbox rules, and monitor for unauthorized forwarding or financial communication changes. 💡 Why It Matters SOC teams lose the most time during the first 30 minutes of an incident — because they’re improvising. This guide gives you: ✅ A clear playbook for each threat type ✅ Repeatable, auditable workflows for analysts ✅ Tactical steps that align with enterprise compliance and governance ⚙️  Quick Wins for SOC Teams Upload playbooks into your SOAR platform for automation Link relevant detections from SIEM or EDR tools Define KPIs (e.g., detection <10 min, containment <30 min) Train analysts using tabletop simulations 📥 Want the full SOC Incident Response Playbook PDF? Drop a 🧠 or PLAYBOOK in the comments — I’ll share it with you. #SOC #IncidentResponse #BlueTeam #DFIR #SIEM #SOAR #EDR #ThreatHunting #CyberSecurity #SecurityOperations #MITRE #Playbook #IncidentHandling

Here's the last post sharing what I spoke about during PDP Week. Our moderator Christopher (2024 Global Vanguard Award for Asia) comes up with the most creative titles for panel discussions. He called this one 'Weather Forecast: Cloudy with a Chance of Breach'. Together with Aparna and Abhishek, we talked about privacy and security in the cloud. 1. Who do you typically engage with IRT privacy and security for the cloud? I wanted to dispel the misconception that if a company engages a cloud service provider (CSP) to store your data, they are responsible for privacy and security, and the company doesn't need to do anything. Generally, the cloud customer is still responsible for security in the cloud e.g. configuring user access to data, services that the customer uses. The CSP is responsible for security of the cloud e.g. physical protection of servers, patching flaws. This is known as "shared responsibility" between the CSP and cloud customer. The extent of each party's responsibilities depend on the deployment used e.g. SaaS, PaaS, IaaS. 2. Shared responsibility also applies within organisations e.g. - IT helps with technical implementation and maintenance of cloud services - IT security helps protect data from unauthorised access - Privacy, Legal, and Compliance provide guidance on compliance with laws, and ensure that contracts with CSPs and vendors include privacy and security clauses 3. What tools/processes are involved in privacy considerations for securing cloud use? They include a Privacy Impact Assessment when e.g. new cloud services are used to process sensitive data, when cloud use involves data transfers to various countries. Privacy management tools include encryption, anonymisation, pseudonymisation, access controls. CSPs usually make audit reports available to prospective and current customers, you can request for them. Also, have a well defined incident response plan. 4. How do you implement and manage breach or incident response for the multi-cloud? Multi-cloud environments can be challenging, because each CSP may have its own set of interfaces, tools, processes for incident response. You need to develop a unified incident response framework that can be applied across all cloud providers, which defines standard procedures for detecting, reporting, and responding to incidents, and which can enable collaboration between different cloud environments. The framework must facilitate internal coordination between various teams, as well as external coordination with CSPs. CSPs play a critical role in incident response, as they control the infrastructure and have visibility into their own environments. Ensure that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined, that you understand your legal obligations IRT breach notification e.g. who you need to notify and by when. Get corp comms' help with communication strategies vis-a-vis affected parties, regulators, staff, and other stakeholders. #APF24

☁️ 🔎 𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐝 𝐈𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬: 𝐊𝐞𝐲 𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 The must-have, should-have, and nice-to-have cloud logs for incident response across Microsoft, AWS, and Google Cloud. Invictus Incident Response covers key log types like Entra ID Sign-in logs, CloudTrail Management events, and Google Admin Activity logs. The post includes real-world incident response examples for each cloud provider, demonstrating how different log types are used to investigate cryptomining, S3 ransomware, and data theft from Google Cloud Storage. https://lnkd.in/gUKCHJiF