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Incident Response in Cybersecurity

What is Incident Response?

Incident response (IR) is the process of implementing a solution to recover from a cyberattack and ensuring that future cyberattacks do not occur because of footholds and other unknown malware being left behind.  Traditional cybersecurity has become a process of documenting known behavioral patterns within an environment and reacting to anything that steps out of those lines.

Unfortunately, attackers can often use good and bad software in your environment with self-evolving/reproducing malware that creates new signatures each time, slipping past detection tools and going undetected; rendering the detection process unreliable on its own.

Incident Response with Default Deny and Cyberattack Prevention

ThreatLocker changes the dynamics of incident response from a default allow to a default deny perspective. Using ThreatLocker, you can immediately take control of the environment and secure the machines once deployed. You can automatically select the software you need to run, and block everything else, preventing another cyberattack.

Graphic of ThreatLocker computer showcasing Allowlisting and Ringfencing

Complete Visibility Into Your Environment

The ThreatLocker agent will give you complete visibility immediately on all network traffic, executions, elevations, and access to all the files within an environment. Once the agent is deployed, you can lock down and start granting access on a process and user level.  

The Unified Audit hosts countless logs of data collected by each product in the full ThreatLocker Protection Platform. Because of these logs, incident response professionals can employ the Unified Audit to track where malware has originated within an organization and where it is actively executing.

Data collected can provide visibility on:

  • Software that has run or was blocked after attempting to run
  • How applications interact with other applications, network resources, registry keys, or files, or if there is an attempt to interact with these resources maliciously
  • Software that has run or was blocked after attempting to run
  • Who or what attempted to interact with your data files
  • Attempts to take admin-level actions on user accounts
  • The inbound and outbound network traffic between endpoints and the internet

Application Containment

ThreatLocker can review all permitted software and limit what it can do. ThreatLocker Ringfencing™ can prevent an application from becoming weaponized and stepping out of line via communicating with other applications, your data, the internet, and anything else it does not need access to. Threat actors will often use tools that live off the land such as PowerShell, the registry, or RunDLL. With ThreatLocker Ringfencing™, you can immediately lock those down so they cannot encrypt or exfiltrate your data, hardening the environment.

When deploying ThreatLocker into an infected environment in full Lockdown Mode, you can contain any unknown malware by essentially “freezing” everything executing on an endpoint. This will not only contain malware and prevent it from spreading between endpoints, but also prevent malware and threat actors from re-infecting endpoints that have been validated as clean and secure. If you utilize multiple tools in your incident response strategy, you can implement policies within ThreatLocker to allow just those tools to run in the victim’s environment to initiate the investigation or recovery process.
ThreatLocker illustration of how Ringfencing™ works

Deploying ThreatLocker

The ThreatLocker Protection Platform is easy to deploy with the assistance of the ThreatLocker Cyber Hero Support Team. The first ThreatLocker agent can be deployed within 15 minutes, and with the help of an RMM, ThreatLocker can be deployed across thousands of endpoints within the first hour of responding to a cyberattack.

Benefits of ThreatLocker:

  • Being able to block all known and unknown malware
  • Control the weaponization of good tools (Where traditional incident response strategies may not have stopped malware)
  • Able to get a process with ThreatLocker Ops as a known identified compromise
  • Able to lock down admin permissions
  • Shut down all network traffic except what’s needed and use dynamic ACLs to control the traffic
  • Resolve any questions or issues with our ThreatLocker Cyber Heroes, who are available within 30 seconds via the admin portal chat or telephone 24/7/365

ThreatLocker® Key Uses

Proactive Approach to Cybersecurity

Unlike antivirus or traditional EDR, ThreatLocker Allowlisting solution puts you in control of what software, scripts, executables, and libraries can run on your endpoints and servers. This approach stops not only malicious software in its tracks but also stops other unpermitted applications from running. This process greatly minimizes cyber threats and other rogue applications from running on your network.

Preventing the Weaponization of Legitimate Tools

Normally, applications have access to all the same data as the end user. If an application is absolutely necessary, ThreatLocker® Ringfencing™ can implement Zero Trust controls comparable to, but more granular than, traditional application containment toolsThreatLocker Ringfencing™ controls what applications are able to do once they are running. By limiting how software can interact on your devices, ThreatLocker® can reduce the likelihood of an exploit being successful or an attacker weaponizing legitimate tools such as PowerShell.. These controls can prevent applications from interacting with another application, your files, data, or the internet.

Limiting Application Hopping for Administrators

Elevation Control puts IT administrators in the driver’s seat, enabling them to control specific applications that can run as a local admin without giving users local admin rights.With applications such as Quickbooks that need to run with local admin access; Elevation control can limit that access without impacting operational workflow, which can prevent the further spread of an attack, like application hopping, in case there is a breach in the endpoint.

Control Over Storage Devices and Data Access

ThreatLocker Storage Control provides policy-driven control over storage devices, whether the storage device is a local folder, a network share, or external storage such as a USB drive. Storage Control allows you to set granular policies, such as blocking USB drives or blocking access to your backup share except when your backup application is accessed.