Four Must-Haves For Efficient Incident Response Analysis And Investigation

Harnessing the Power of Insights with Binalyze AIR 4.0

Picture this: You’ve gathered all of the evidence and artifacts needed to perform an investigation; armed with some rich insights you’re confident will enable you to move onto the analysis and investigation phase. 

In many cases, getting to this point can be painstaking, with the process of collecting evidence alone marred by complexities including remote acquisition and, typically, a diverse mix of systems and environments to collect from. And, with 77% of organizations outsourcing or supplementing internal capabilities with third parties, this can be slowed down even more. You need to factor in the time needed to work with customers or stakeholders to gain access to systems, networks, logs and the data needed to conduct your investigation.

Despite all those challenges met, you still find it difficult to then make quick progress on your investigations.  A recent IDC study found that investigations take an average of 26.1 days and an additional 17.1 days to resolve. Critically, that timeframe is ample opportunity  for an attack to cause lasting damage, operational losses, and drive up breach related costs. Especially in cases like ransomware, the primary threat facing organizations today, where the time between initial access and the ransomware payload delivery continues to shrink. 

The challenges of complex data acquisition are further compounded with DFIR professionals  using close to 15 paid or open-source tools during the identification and investigation phase alone.  In the same IDC study, 39% of respondents believe that too many tools are needed to conduct a comprehensive investigation. A sentiment echoed by many cybersecurity professionals, to actioning their own tasks. Multiple tools mean scattered data, differing formats, constant neck swiveling between different screens, leaving investigations prone to gaps and inaccuracies.

Time is often wasted, chasing false positives, wading through rows of evidence and findings distributed across systems (and teammates), exacerbating the already prominent challenge of alert fatigue and data overload. There’s simply too much to sift through, in too many places, and with too little time.


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Finally, the difficulty of stitching investigations together from fragmented tools and different data sets, is further challenged by the inevitable siloes created by the number of contributors involved in the analysis and investigation phases.

Traditional DFIR tools and security solutions are falling short, often providing neither the visibility needed or the efficiency driving capabilities needed and making it difficult for responders and analysts to start and efficiently progress their incident response investigations. If this sounds all too familiar, it’s time to look for a solution that provides:

  • Consolidated and integrated view. Bringing relevant evidence, forensic findings, and essential capabilities together into a single pane of glass, helping stitch together the narrative. It also reduces the need to juggle between multiple tools, and removes disruption and time-wasting associated with transitioning between different applications and tools.
  • Intelligent evidence prioritization & decision support. Consolidation is great, but isn’t a solution on its own. Without a means to prioritize and enrich the evidence, you may be creating an even noisier, overwhelming picture. Regularly updated, research-led automated IOC and anomaly scanning, scoring and verdicts, alongside MITRE ATT&CK mapping reduces noise; simplifying access to the insights that matter. It’s about giving you confidence in a rapidly evolving threat-landscape, leading to a focused investigation and speedier resolution.
  • Efficiency-driving collaboration.  Working in a silo, without visibility of what others are doing or have done, can hinder progress in an investigation, or worse, result in repeated work. Cybersecurity is a team sport, and collaboration is a cornerstone of efficient investigation. With the complexity of today’s environment, drawing on the collective experience of a team can lead to major breakthroughs and insights that can result in faster resolution. Team members need to work from one collaborative space, enabled with bookmarking and shared visibility.
  • Intuitive design. Whether you are a seasoned incident responder or a budding junior security analyst, intuitive UI/UX design can help save significant time and reduce points of friction in your workflows. Solutions that offer optimized designs help by suggesting next steps and related actions for users.These design touches enable you to quickly launch tasks, or perform bulk actions on assets without any unnecessary back and forth

Binalyze’s cutting-edge platform, AIR, combines deep visibility and efficiency-driving incident response capabilities. Join us on Tuesday, October 24 as we unveil the power of consolidation, prioritization and collaboration for efficient incident response investigation, during a live webinar featuring our latest version, AIR 4.0.  

Register your attendance here.

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