Incident Response and Recovery - Architecture Insights

NIST Incident Response Lifecycle

NIST released updated incident response guidance in April 2025, emphasizing six key principles aligned with CSF 2.0:

Core Principles (CSF 2.0 Alignment)

Govern: Establish cybersecurity risk management strategy
Identify: Asset management and risk assessment
Protect: Implement appropriate safeguards
Detect: Develop and implement detection activities
Respond: Take action regarding detected incidents
Recover: Maintain resilience and restore capabilities

Incident Response Team Structure

NIST recommends expanding beyond traditional “incident handler” teams to include company leadership, legal teams, technology professionals, public relations teams, and human resources.

Incident response is a team sport that requires coordination across technical, legal, communications, and business functions.

Core Team Roles:

Incident Commander: Overall response coordination
Security Analyst: Technical investigation and analysis
Legal Counsel: Regulatory and liability guidance
Communications: Internal and external messaging
Management: Business decision making
IT Operations: System restoration and hardening

Response Phases

Preparation

Preparation Determines Response Success

The quality of your incident response is determined long before an incident occurs. Organizations with documented plans, trained teams, and tested procedures respond faster and more effectively than those scrambling to coordinate during a crisis.

Policies and Procedures: Documented response plans
Team Training: Regular drills and exercises
Tools and Resources: Incident response toolkit
Communication Plans: Internal and external contacts
Legal Preparations: Regulatory notification procedures

Detection and Analysis

Event Detection: Monitoring and alerting systems
Initial Assessment: Incident classification and scoping
Evidence Collection: Forensic data preservation
Impact Analysis: Business and technical impact assessment
Stakeholder Notification: Management and team alerts

Containment, Eradication, and Recovery

Short-term Containment: Immediate threat isolation
Long-term Containment: Sustained threat mitigation
Eradication: Root cause removal
Recovery: System restoration and monitoring
Validation: Verification of successful recovery

Post-Incident Activity

Lessons Learned: Process improvement identification
Documentation: Complete incident record
Evidence Retention: Legal and compliance requirements
Process Updates: Policy and procedure refinements

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

Critical Process Identification: Essential business functions
Recovery Time Objective (RTO): Maximum acceptable downtime
Recovery Point Objective (RPO): Maximum acceptable data loss
Dependency Mapping: Internal and external dependencies

Recovery Strategies

Site Recovery Options

Hot Site

Fully operational backup facility
Near-instant failover capability
Highest cost
Best for critical systems requiring minimal downtime

RTO: Minutes to hours

Warm Site

Partially equipped facility
Requires configuration and data restore
Moderate cost
Balance between cost and recovery speed

RTO: Hours to days

Cloud Recovery and Cold Sites

Cloud Recovery environments offer flexible, cost-effective alternatives to physical sites with on-demand scaling. Cold Sites provide basic infrastructure only (power, cooling, network) but require full equipment procurement and setup, resulting in days to weeks recovery time and the lowest cost option.

Data Backup Strategies

Full Backup: Complete data copy
Incremental Backup: Changes since last backup
Differential Backup: Changes since last full backup
Continuous Data Protection: Real-time data replication
3-2-1 Rule: 3 copies, 2 different media, 1 offsite

Recovery Testing

Tabletop Exercises: Discussion-based scenarios
Functional Tests: Specific system component testing
Full-Scale Tests: Complete environment simulation
Regular Schedule: Annual or bi-annual testing
Documentation: Test results and improvement plans