SANS Institute Releases Results of Survey, Incident Response: How to Fight Back

BETHESDA, Md., Aug. 12, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A spate of high-profile security breaches and attacks means that security practitioners find themselves thinking a lot about incident response. A new SANS incident response survey, sponsored by AccessData, AlienVault, Arbor Networks, Bit9 + Carbon Black, HP and McAfee/Intel Security, looks at how practitioners are dealing with these numerous incidents.

"Many small organizations think they are a less significant target to sophisticated attackers and are, therefore, safe from intrusion," says SANS Analyst and author Alissa Torres. "As last week's discovery of the loss of 1.2 billion usernames and passwords from 420,000 websites demonstrated, nothing could be farther from the truth."

In fact, organizations of all sizes are facing incidents that require incident response capabilities. And unfortunately, only 9% of survey respondents labeled their incident response capabilities as very effective, and 26% were dissatisfied, citing lack or time to review and practice procedures (62%) and lack of budget (60%) as key impediments to effective response.

Jake Williams, SANS Analyst and incident response professional, adds, "Overall, organizations are not ready to handle their incident response requirements. Having a plan in place to address incidents, including delineation of what constitutes an incident, enables organizations to address issues when they do arise." Still, 43% of respondents did not have formalized incident response plans and 55% didn't have formal incident response teams. Williams continues, "Both of these situations lead to disjointed approaches to managing and remediating incidents, resulting in delayed responses and more costly mitigation."

Survey results point to automation and security information and event management integration tools as key means to improving incident response processes. Other recommendations provide insights into how to grow incident response capabilities.

Full results will be shared during a two-part webcast, which will also provide insight into incident response plans, attack histories, where organizations should focus their response efforts, and how to put all of the pieces together.

Part 1—Incident Response Techniques and Processes: Where We Are in the Six-Step Process, Thursday, August 14, 2014, at 1:00 PM EDT, will focus on survey results and where we are as an industry in terms of the incident response process. Register to attend the complimentary webcast at www.sans.org/info/165522

Part 2—Growing and Maturing an IR Capability, Friday, August 15, 2014, at 1:00 PM EDT, will focus on survey results about capability for incident response and how to grow those capabilities. Register to attend this complimentary webcast at www.sans.org/info/165527

Those who register for either webcast will also receive access to the published results paper developed by SANS analyst and incident response expert, Alissa Torres.

#IncidentResponse: what works? What doesn't? 2 webcasts: AUG 14 http://bit.ly/IRSurv-Results; AUG 15 http://bit.ly/IRSurv-Results2

SANS IR Survey Results 8/14 http://bit.ly/IRSurv-Results AND 8/15 http://bit.ly/IRSurv-Results2.

Update your #IncidentResponse know-how. 2 survey results webcasts: 8/14 http://bit.ly/IRSurv-Results; 8/15 http://bit.ly/IRSurv-Results2

About SANS Institute
The SANS Institute was established in 1989 as a cooperative research and education organization. SANS is the most trusted, and by far the largest source for world-class information security training and security certification in the world offering over 50 training courses. GIAC, an affiliate of the SANS Institute, is a certification body featuring over 27 hands-on, technical certifications in information security. SANS offers a myriad of free resources to the InfoSec community including consensus projects, research reports, and newsletters; and it operates the Internet's early warning system - the Internet Storm Center. At the heart of SANS are the many security practitioners in varied global organizations from corporations to universities working together to help the entire information security community. (www.SANS.org)

SOURCE SANS Institute