Response professionals working in the industry are overwhelmed with the massive increase in the number of attacks and incidents that happen on a daily basis. Automation can be a huge benefit to them in reducing the repetitive workload and freeing them to focus on the more creative elements of the work. In this article we will be looking at 3 free automated incident response tools and their features in some detail, so read on.
- CIMSweep
This is a popular automation suite that enables you to automate your cyber-attack incident responses. This is a part of a suite of tools that are CIM/WMI based, which helps analysts to do threat hunting as well as incident responses on a Windows operating system. These tools are very powerful and they allow analysts to get forensic data such as registry keys, logs from the attack, processes that were affected and so forth, which is invaluable in understanding the anatomy of the attack and how to prepare a defense against it.
This toolset also provides developers with the ability to write small functions that can assist in the easy collection of all attack-related data, data sweeping for malicious files, activities deemed suspicious with the behavior of the attacker and so forth.
- GRR rapid response
GRR is an incident response tool that has been developed by a highly reputed search engine company that provides a good level of automation to the process of incident response and reporting. This software works on all platforms and is based on the Python Script. This tool helps analysts easily perform data collection tasks such as attack analysis, file search, malicious activity discovery and other related tasks. This is a scalable solution and has been deployed in many reputable organizations.
- MIG
This is also a good incident response tool developed by a reputed internet browser company that provides analysts with the ability to quickly and easily provide an end-point query search and also the accompanying investigation on it. Even forensic data such as running processes, logged-in users, firewall exceptions, open ports, credential changes, and connected devices can be easily logged and sent for further analysis, thus eliminating a lot of manual work that otherwise would need to be performed.
IT is true that these free tools are rather simple and won’t give you a tailored solution to all of your automation needs, but they are a great starting point to take the manual load off of your cyber security teams. It is advisable for an organization looking to get into automation to first try out one of the open-source free incident response tools available on the market and get a feel for the automation capabilities, before purchasing software from a reputed supplier.
