Cyber Risks · Cisco Talos

How an incident response retainer can drive proactive security

Summary: Cisco Talos describes an education-sector customer that used its Incident Response retainer after proactive threat hunting surfaced suspicious network activity, and responders traced the intrusion to a single endpoint compromised with a single credential. Talos cites its 2022 Q3 Quarterly Trends showing pre-ransomware and ransomware activity as the top threat, and a Cisco Secure Security Outcomes Report finding an 11 percent difference in average resilience scores between organizations with an external incident response retainer and those without.

What's compelling: Talos notes that adversaries increasingly establish a foothold through pre-ransomware activity rather than immediately encrypting files, so an intrusion can look like small, innocuous activity until it is not. The 11 percent resilience gap is the stake: the difference between having response expertise on call and assembling it during an incident.

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Topics
Detection & Response
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