Incident response is a structured approach to managing and responding to security breaches and cyber attacks. Security teams must overcome challenges such as timely detection, comprehensive data collection, and coordinated action to improve readiness. Improvements in these areas ensure a fast and effective response, minimizing damage and quickly restoring normal operations.
Incident response challenges
Incident response presents several challenges that must be addressed to ensure a fast and effective recovery from a cyber attack. The following sections present some of these challenges.
- TimelinessOne of the main challenges in incident response is to address the incident quickly to minimize the damage: a delayed response can lead to a larger breach and increased recovery costs.
- Correlation of informationSecurity teams often struggle to effectively collect and correlate relevant data, and without a holistic view, it’s difficult to understand the full scope and impact of an incident.
- Coordination and communicationIncident response requires coordination between many different parties: technical teams, management, external partners, etc. Poor communication can lead to confusion and an ineffective response.
- Resource ConstraintsMany organizations operate with limited security resources. Understaffed teams have difficulty handling multiple incidents simultaneously, which can lead to prioritization issues and things falling through the cracks.
Incident Response Stages
- Preparation This includes creating an incident response plan, training your team, and setting up the right tools to detect and respond to threats.
- identification This is the next important step: effective monitoring is required to quickly and accurately alert you to suspicious activity.
- Containment Take immediate steps to limit the spread of the incident, including short-term efforts to isolate the breach and longer-term strategies to secure systems before they become fully operational.
- eradication It involves addressing the root cause of the incident, which may include removing the malware or fixing the vulnerability that was exploited.
- recovery Systems need to be restored and monitored closely to ensure they are clean and functioning properly after an incident.
- Lessons learned Review the incident and your response. This step is essential to improving future responses.
How Wazuh improves incident response preparedness
Wazuh is an open source platform that provides unified Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) capabilities across workloads in cloud and on-premises environments. Wazuh performs log data analysis, file integrity monitoring, threat detection, real-time alerting, and automated incident response. The following sections list some of the ways Wazuh can improve your incident response:
Automated Incident Response
The Wazuh Active Response module triggers actions in response to specific events on monitored endpoints. When an alert meets certain criteria, such as a specific rule ID, severity level, or rule group, the module initiates predefined actions to address the incident. Security administrators can configure automated actions to respond to specific security incidents.
Implementing an active response script in Wazuh requires defining commands and configuring responses so that the script will execute under the appropriate conditions, allowing organizations to tailor their incident response to their unique security needs. Here’s an overview of the implementation process:
- Command definition: Define the command in the Wazuh manager configuration file, specifying the location of the script and any required parameters. For example:
<command> <name>quarantine-host</name> <executable>quarantine_host.sh</executable> <expect>srcip</expect> </command>
- Active Response Configuration: Configure active responses to determine the conditions under which they are executed, associate commands with specific rules, and set execution parameters. For example:
<active-response> <command>quarantine-host</command> <location>any</location> <level>10</level> <timeout>600</timeout> </active-response>
- Rule Association: Custom active responses are linked to specific rules in a Wazuh ruleset, ensuring that the script is executed when the associated alert is triggered.
This implementation process allows security teams to efficiently automate responses and customize incident response strategies.
Default Security Actions
Wazuh Active Response automatically takes several specific actions by default in response to certain security alerts on both Windows and Linux endpoints. These actions include, but are not limited to:
Blocking known bad actors
Wazuh can block known bad actors by adding their IP addresses to a denylist as soon as an alert is triggered. This active response ensures that bad actors are immediately disconnected from the target system or network.
This process typically involves continuously monitoring log data and network traffic to detect breaches or anomalous behavior. When suspicious activity is identified, Wazuh’s predefined rules trigger alerts. The Wazuh Active Response module runs scripts to update firewall rules or network access control lists to block malicious IP addresses. Response actions are logged and notifications are sent to security personnel for further investigation.
In this use case, we leverage the Alienvault IP Reputation Database and public IP reputation databases such as AbuseIPDB that contain malicious IP addresses to identify and block known threats. The image below shows how malicious IP addresses are identified and blocked based on the IP reputation database.
Malware detection and removal with Wazuh
Wazuh leverages its File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) capabilities, threat intelligence integration, and predefined rules to monitor file activity on endpoints and detect anomalous patterns that indicate a potential malware attack. When file changes matching known malware behavior are identified, an alert is triggered. The Wazuh active response module then initiates scripts to remove malicious files, preventing them from executing and causing further damage.
All actions are logged and detailed notifications are generated for security personnel. These logs contain information about anomalies detected and responsive actions taken, and provide the status of affected endpoints. Security teams can use the detailed logs and data from Wazuh to investigate attacks and take additional remediation measures.
The image below shows Wazuh using VirusTotal to detect malicious software and then removing the detected malware via Wazuh’s active response.
Policy Enforcement
Account lockout is a security measure that protects users against brute force attacks by limiting the number of times they can attempt to log in within a specified period of time. Organizations can use Wazuh to automatically enforce security policies such as disabling user accounts after multiple failed password attempts.
Wazuh uses an out-of-the-box active response script, disabled-account, to disable an account after three failed authentication attempts. In this use case, the user is blocked for five minutes.
<ossec_config> <active-response> <command>disable-account</command> <location>local</location> <rules_id>120100</rules_id> <timeout>300</timeout> </active-response> </ossec_config>
In the image below, the Wazuh active response module disables a user account on a Linux endpoint and then automatically re-enables it after five minutes.
Customizable Security Actions
Wazuh also provides flexibility by allowing users to develop custom active response scripts in any programming language, allowing them to tailor responses to their organization’s unique requirements. For example, a Python script can be designed to modify firewall settings to quarantine an endpoint.
Integration with third-party incident response tools
Wazuh integrates with a variety of third-party incident response tools to enhance its capabilities and provide a broader range of security solutions. This integration allows organizations to leverage their existing investments in security infrastructure while still benefiting from Wazuh’s capabilities.
For example, Wazuh can be integrated with Shuffle, a security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) platform, to create advanced automation workflows that streamline the incident response process.
Similarly, enhancing incident response through the integration of Wazuh with DFIR-IRIS provides an insightful combination of digital forensics and incident response (DFIR). DFIR-IRIS is a multi-purpose incident response framework that provides expanded incident investigation and mitigation capabilities when integrated with Wazuh.
These integrations enable you to:
- Automatic ticket creation in IT Service Management (ITSM) systems.
- Tune your threat intelligence searches to enrich your alert data.
- Coordinated response actions across multiple security tools.
- Customized reporting and notification workflows.
For example, when a phishing email containing a malicious link is detected by Wazuh, an incident ticket is automatically created in the ITSM system and assigned to the relevant team for immediate response. At the same time, Wazuh queries the threat intelligence platform to enrich the alert data with additional context about the malicious link, such as its origin and associated threats. The security orchestration tool automatically isolates affected endpoints and blocks the malicious IP across all network devices. Customized reports and notifications are generated and sent to relevant parties to inform them about the incident and the actions taken.
Leveraging these integrations, security teams can respond quickly and effectively to phishing attacks, minimizing potential damage and preventing further spread. Integrating third-party tools with Wazuh facilitates streamlined and automated processes, enhancing incident response preparedness.
Conclusion
Strengthening incident response readiness is essential to minimizing the impact of cyber attacks, and Wazuh provides a comprehensive solution to help organizations achieve this with real-time visibility, automated response capabilities, and the ability to integrate with third-party tools.
Wazuh helps security teams manage incidents, improve response times, and ensure a robust security posture. To learn more about Wazuh, check out our documentation and join our community of experts.
