🏛️ On-Premises Environment Incident Response Plan
Focused, grounded, and precise—protecting physical infrastructure with digital discipline.
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Prepare: Lock down your assets before the adversary tries.
Detect: Read the signs from your logs, endpoints, and users.
Contain: Move swiftly to isolate and stop the threat.
Eradicate: Clean everything—deep and wide—no shortcuts.
Recover: Restore only what you trust, monitor all else.
Learn: Turn the breach into your best teacher.
Framework
Framework
1️⃣ Preparation
1️⃣ Preparation
“Solid walls begin with strong foundations—build defenses before they’re tested.”
🛠️ What to Do:
🛠️ What to Do:
Harden endpoints, servers, and network devices using CIS Benchmarks
Enforce group policy (GPO), endpoint protection, and MFA on critical systems
Enable and forward logs: Sysmon, Windows Event Logs, Linux auditd
Document response playbooks tailored to on-prem breaches
Train IT, helpdesk, and security teams on response escalation
2️⃣ Detection & Analysis
2️⃣ Detection & Analysis
“Logs don’t lie—if you know how to listen.”
🛠️ What to Do:
🛠️ What to Do:
Deploy SIEM (e.g., Splunk, QRadar, ELK) to centralize log analysis
Use EDR tools to identify lateral movement and unknown binaries
Analyze:
Login anomalies (e.g., failed logons, after-hours access)
USB/mountable media usage
File integrity monitoring (FIM) alerts
Classify incident severity and entry point (phishing, RDP brute-force, malware dropper)
3️⃣ Containment
3️⃣ Containment
“Cut the infection line without severing the organization.”
🛠️ What to Do:
🛠️ What to Do:
Disconnect infected machines from the network
Apply firewall rules or ACLs to isolate subnets
Kill malicious processes and remove scheduled tasks or services
Snapshot disks and memory before full system shutdown (preserve evidence)
4️⃣ Eradication
4️⃣ Eradication
“Purge the threat—fully, cleanly, confidently.”
🛠️ What to Do:
🛠️ What to Do:
Run deep scans using AV, EDR, and forensic tools (e.g., Velociraptor)
Remove any dropped payloads, registry changes, or persistence mechanisms
Patch all affected systems and confirm no shadow accounts remain
Rebuild high-risk systems from golden images if compromise is suspected
5️⃣ Recovery
5️⃣ Recovery
“Rebuild what matters—with integrity.”
🛠️ What to Do:
🛠️ What to Do:
Restore from verified clean backups only
Re-image compromised systems and validate services before going live
Monitor reconnected systems with heightened alerting
Run post-restoration integrity checks (e.g., file hashes, network behavior)
6️⃣ Lessons Learned
6️⃣ Lessons Learned
“Honor the breach by becoming stronger because of it.”
🛠️ What to Do:
🛠️ What to Do:
Run an incident post-mortem with security, IT, and leadership
Document:
Timeline of detection and response
Gaps in visibility or control
Successes and lessons
Update detection rules, IR playbooks, and user training
Share sanitized version of findings internally to boost security culture
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