/incident-response

name: "incident-response"
description: "Handle a suspected security breach: triage, SEV1-SEV4 severity, escalation and forensic evidence, per NIST SP 800-61. Use whenever the user thinks they were hacked, sees suspicious activity or a leaked key. Outages: incident-commander."

Incident Response

Incident response skill for the full lifecycle from initial triage through forensic collection, severity declaration, and escalation routing. This is NOT threat hunting (see threat-detection) or post-incident compliance mapping (see governance/compliance-mapping) — this is about classifying, triaging, and managing declared security incidents.

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Table of Contents

• [Overview](#overview)
• [Incident Triage Tool](#incident-triage-tool)
• [Incident Classification](#incident-classification)
• [Severity Framework](#severity-framework)
• [False Positive Filtering](#false-positive-filtering)
• [Forensic Evidence Collection](#forensic-evidence-collection)
• [Escalation Paths](#escalation-paths)
• [Regulatory Notification Obligations](#regulatory-notification-obligations)
• [Workflows](#workflows)
• [Anti-Patterns](#anti-patterns)
• [Cross-References](#cross-references)

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Overview

What This Skill Does

This skill provides the methodology and tooling for **incident triage and response** — classifying security events into typed incidents, scoring severity, filtering false positives, determining escalation paths, and initiating forensic evidence collection under chain-of-custody controls.

Distinction from Other Security Skills

| Skill | Focus | Approach | |-------|-------|----------| | **incident-response** (this) | Active incidents | Reactive — classify, escalate, collect evidence | | threat-detection | Pre-incident hunting | Proactive — find threats before alerts fire | | cloud-security | Cloud posture assessment | Preventive — IAM, S3, network misconfiguration | | red-team | Offensive simulation | Offensive — test detection and response capability |

Prerequisites

A security event must be ingested before triage. Events can come from SIEM alerts, EDR detections, threat intel feeds, or user reports. The triage tool accepts JSON event payloads; see the input schema below.

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Incident Triage Tool

The `incident_triage.py` tool classifies events, checks false positives, scores severity, determines escalation, and performs forensic pre-analysis.

# Classify an event from JSON file
python3 scripts/incident_triage.py --input event.json --classify --json

# Classify with false positive filtering enabled
python3 scripts/incident_triage.py --input event.json --classify --false-positive-check --json

# Force a severity level for tabletop exercises
python3 scripts/incident_triage.py --input event.json --severity sev1 --json

# Read event from stdin
echo '{"event_type": "ransomware", "host": "prod-db-01", "raw_payload": {}}' | \
  python3 scripts/incident_triage.py --classify --false-positive-check --json

Input Event Schema

{
  "event_type": "ransomware",
  "host": "prod-db-01",
  "user": "svc_backup",
  "source_ip": "10.1.2.3",
  "timestamp": "2024-01-15T14:32:00Z",
  "raw_payload": {}
}

Exit Codes

| Code | Meaning | Required Response | |------|---------|-------------------| | 0 | SEV3/SEV4 or clean | Standard ticket-based handling | | 1 | SEV2 — elevated | 1-hour bridge call, async coordination | | 2 | SEV1 — critical | Immediate 15-minute war room, all-hands |

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Incident Classification

Security events are classified into 14 incident types. Classification drives default severity, MITRE technique mapping, and response SLA.

Incident Taxonomy

| Incident Type | Default Severity | MITRE Technique | Response SLA | |--------------|-----------------|-----------------|--------------| | ransomware | SEV1 | T1486 | 15 minutes | | data_exfiltration | SEV1 | T1048 | 15 minutes | | apt_intrusion | SEV1 | T1566 | 15 minutes | | supply_chain_compromise | SEV1 | T1195 | 15 minutes | | domain_controller_breach | SEV1 | T1078.002 | 15 minutes | | credential_compromise | SEV2 | T1110 | 1 hour | | lateral_movement | SEV2 | T1021 | 1 hour | | malware_infection | SEV2 | T1204 | 1 hour | | insider_threat | SEV2 | T1078 | 1 hour | | cloud_account_compromise | SEV2 | T1078.004 | 1 hour | | unauthorized_access | SEV3 | T1190 | 4 hours | | policy_violation | SEV3 | N/A | 4 hours | | phishing_attempt | SEV4 | T1566.001 | 24 hours | | security_alert | SEV4 | N/A | 24 hours |

SEV Escalation Triggers

Any of the following automatically re-declare a higher severity:

| Trigger | New Severity | |---------|-------------| | Ransomware note found | SEV1 | | Active exfiltration confirmed | SEV1 | | CloudTrail or SIEM disabled | SEV1 | | Domain controller access confirmed | SEV1 | | Second system compromised | SEV1 | | Exfiltration volume exceeds 1 GB | SEV2 minimum | | C-suite account accessed | SEV2 minimum |

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Severity Framework

SEV Level Matrix

| Level | Name | Criteria | Skills Invoked | Escalation Path | |-------|------|----------|---------------|-----------------| | SEV1 | Critical | Confirmed ransomware; active PII/PHI exfiltration (>10K records); domain controller breach; defense evasion (CloudTrail disabled); supply chain compromise | All skills (parallel) | SOC Lead → CISO → CEO → Board Chair | | SEV2 | High | Confirmed unauthorized access to sensitive systems; credential compromise with elevated privileges; lateral movement confirmed; ransomware indicators without confirmed execution | triage + containment + forensics | SOC Lead → CISO | | SEV3 | Medium | Suspected unauthorized access (unconfirmed); malware detected and contained; single account compromise (no priv escalation) | triage + containment | SOC Lead → Security Manager | | SEV4 | Low | Security alert with no confirmed impact; informational indicator; policy violation with no data risk | triage only | L3 Analyst queue |

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False Positive Filtering

The triage tool ap