What is incident response?
Incident response (IR) is a set of coordinated steps taken to detect, analyze, contain, and recover from cybersecurity incidents. Because it involves strategically planning for and responding to security incidents, the goal of IR is to convert panic-driven response into long-term resilience.
These days, with cloud risks and emerging technologies (like AI) further increasing security incidents, standardized incident response frameworks have emerged. These frameworks, like NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3, replace the chaotic, siloed incident response processes of old with properly orchestrated, collaborative incident containment.
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What is NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3?
NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3 is the third revision of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Computer Security Incident Handling Guide.
NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3 addresses “adverse cybersecurity events,” outlining a list of procedures and security operations center (SOC) best practices that incorporate IR into ongoing cyber risk management. (Which is why NIST encourages adopting SP 800-61 Rev. 3 alongside other NIST cloud security standards, including NIST CSF 2.0, to integrate IR with governance and risk management.)
Why does NIST IR matter?
Organizations adopt the NIST incident response model for more than compliance: It also enables a repeatable, efficient, and business-aligned approach to cybersecurity events. Here’s a closer look at the benefits of adoption:
NIST compliance
The most obvious benefit is that adopting the framework demonstrates compliance with NIST cloud security standards. NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3 also supports compliance with other global standards like FISMA, SOC 2, and HIPAA.
Broad coverage across various sectors
NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3 is widely adopted across government agencies, critical infrastructure like energy, enterprise sectors such as finance and healthcare, and all organizations subject to FISMA.
A repeatable, structured approach to incident response
Instead of making big decisions under pressure, the NIST IR guidelines ensure that whenever security incidents strike, organizations can draw on tested and tried procedures to immediately contain them.
Operational alignment
NIST IR replaces siloed teams and un/misreported events with collaborative teams who share a common cybersecurity language.
Overview of the NIST incident response lifecycle
NIST Core Functions
NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3 is informed by the six NIST CSF 2.0 Core Functions:
Govern (GV): Developing, communicating, and monitoring the enforcement of the enterprise’s risk management strategy
Identify (ID): Inventorying all of the cyber risks associated with the enterprise’s assets
Protect (PR): Implementing safeguards to mitigate the risks
Detect (DE): Uncovering anomalies and potential attacks
Respond (RS): Isolating systems, containing the incident, and removing the threat
Recover (RC): Restoring affected systems and looking for ways to improve the cycle
The idea behind NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3 is that unlike old-school threats, security incidents are no longer isolated, occasional occurrences that should be handled only by dedicated IR teams.
The security events of today are much more regular and damaging: A publicly exposed storage bucket here, a leaked secret there, a disgruntled employee with admin access—all of these can converge into disastrous cyberattacks that leave businesses reeling for months.
The bottom line? Organizations can no longer afford to respond to incidents after the fact. IR must become part of organizations’ cybersecurity risk management strategy. And according to NIST, it should follow a 3-phased workflow that incorporates the 6 CSF Core Functions mentioned above.
NIST’s IR phases
Phase 1: 🧑💻Preparation
The first phase leverages three NIST CSF functions—Govern, Identify, and Protect—to…
Identify assets and risks so you know what to protect (e.g., what kind of data do we have and where is it stored?)
Enforce controls and safeguards to prevent incidents (for instance, role-based access controls)
Establish IR playbooks for handling various incidents
Deploy SOC tools for proactive monitoring and anomaly detection
Phase 2: 📢 Incident response
The IR phase is where incident detection, analysis, containment, eradication, and recovery occur. This phase features NIST CSF functions 4, 5, and 6—Detect, Respond, and Recover— which include activities like…
Collecting and analyzing logs to uncover anomalies (e.g., who modified sensitive data outside of work hours?)
Correlating assets, configurations, and events to discover toxic combinations that put enterprises at risk (think an overprivileged identity + reused password)
Prioritizing risks by business context and exploitability
Instantly isolating threats using cloud detection and response tools
Removing malware, applying patches, and restoring systems
Reporting incidents to stakeholders within and outside of the organization
Phase 3: 📝 Lessons learned
Based largely on Function 2, Identify, this phase targets improving IR and risk management processes by…
Identifying weaknesses in existing practices
Refining security controls and IR plans
Feeding lessons learned back into preparation and IR to create an ongoing, effective loop
Assess how well IR playbooks were followed and update them to reflect new attacker behavior or cloud-specific conditions
Applying the NIST IR framework in the cloud
Challenges
While traditional incident response approaches and tools may work in perimetered IT environments, implementing NIST IR in the cloud is a totally different ball game because of the unique challenges of cloud-native environments:
Short-lived resources
Ephemeral resources like containers and functions (and their temporary credentials!) can be created and deleted in minutes. This means that certain cloud resources might already be gone before issues are detected or snapshots and audit trails needed for forensics have been collected.
For example, say an attacker exploits an attack path from a publicly exposed container to a sensitive database. The container gets deleted in 5 minutes, before your traditional incident response tool can take a snapshot. But the attacker already secured persistent access to the database. How do you detect the threat and investigate the root cause?
Identity-centric attacks
Identity-based attacks, especially misuse of IAM roles, are commonplace in the cloud. That’s because remote accessibility, weak credentials, inherited permissions, and access control misconfigurations—e.g., over-permissioned accounts—make identities easy targets.
The problem here is that unlike vulnerability-based exploits, which are relatively straightforward to discern, identity-based attacks aren’t. They allow attackers to disguise themselves as legitimate entities, rendering their malicious activities nearly indistinguishable from authorized ones.
Multi-cloud visibility gaps
Since providers typically offer disparate security architectures, enterprises with multi-cloud environments face challenges consolidating IR.
The result? Inevitable blind spots. Unavoidable policy inconsistencies. Fragmented detection and correlation. Rising numbers of false positives. And on the off chance that issues get detected accurately, visibility gaps still slow down containment, letting attackers do maximum damage.
Third-party integrations
Third-party integrations like APIs and SaaS tools are another challenge. It’s common for both to incorporate third-party libraries, introducing supply chain vulnerabilities that can be difficult to track. Also, because they’re deployed without proper authorization, shadow APIs and SaaS tools become unmonitored entry points for attackers.
Solutions
The challenges we’ve discussed can make implementing NIST-aligned IR in the cloud feel daunting. But with the right tools, it's not only achievable—it's a significant force multiplier for your security program.
Cloud incident response tools that support agentless visibility, real-time context, and automated evidence collection can help make your NIST IR implementation a snap. Here’s how:
Agentless tools use live APIs to continuously poll cloud-native environments for real-time insights, handling blind spots and the problems that come with short-lived resources.
Tools that incorporate real-time context correlate risks across identities and environments, making them great for tackling identity-centric attacks and multi-cloud visibility gaps.
Automated evidence collection logs and snapshots forensic evidence swiftly, before ephemeral resources are deleted and before vulnerable third-party integrations are introduced into enterprise environments.
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Key capabilities to look for in cloud incident response tools
To help you find the best-fit cloud IR tools, read on for a list of capabilities to consider and how they support each phase of the NIST IR framework.
| Capabilities | NIST IR phases | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| 🔍 Agentless, real-time detection across all cloud providers | Supports phases 1 and 2 | Ensures minimal time to protection in multi-cloud and hybrid environmentsDelivers multi-cloud visibility Snapshots risks and anomalies in ephemeral assets |
| 🧠 Alert correlation and prioritization based on risk | Supports phase 2 | Uncovers toxic combinationsReduces noise and false positivesChannels remediation efforts to high-risk alerts |
| 🧵 Timeline reconstruction and attack path visualization | Supports phases 2 and 3 | Pinpoints initial point of entry and maps entire attack paths to visualize how attacks occurred, attacker movements, and potential/full impact of the attackReconstructs raw exploit data into actionable intelligence needed for root cause/post-incident analysisCuts MTTR and prevents downtime |
| 📦 Integrated identity, data, workload, and configuration context | Supports phases 1 and 2 | Correlates data and workload sensitivity with misconfigurations and IAM risks for:High-fidelity detection Hidden risk discovery Contextual risk prioritization |
| 🤖 Automation hooks for response and evidence collection | Supports phase 2 | Facilitates automated response to exploitsContinuously collects logs and snapshots for root cause analysis |
| 📊 Reporting aligned with frameworks like NIST, ISO, and SOC 2 | Supports phase 3 | Ensures audit readiness by automatically mapping evidence and activity logs to NIST IR phases and reporting requirementsHelps security teams demonstrate compliance progress and maturity to both internal stakeholders and auditors |
Knowing what to look for in an ideal cloud IR tool is only half the battle. The other half is finding a tool that checks ALL the boxes—and Wiz Defend is exactly that tool. Better yet? Wiz delivers all of these capabilities with a focus on context and speed.
How Wiz Defend supports NIST-aligned incident response
Wiz Defend isn’t just about helping you lock down NIST compliance. It’s also about walking you through every phase of NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3:
Phase 1: Preparation—Govern, identify, and protect
Visibility: Wiz’s agentless approach gives you an up-to-date view of all your cloud assets and how to protect them.
Asset mapping: Wiz maps asset relationships to help teams understand how an innocuous risk in one asset can compromise another asset.
Automation: Wiz automates asset labeling and policy enforcement to make governance easy.
Incident response playbooks: Wiz supplies IR playbooks for various security events that enterprises can tailor exactly to their environments.
Monitoring and anomaly detection: Wiz Defend continuously tracks user activity, instantly discovering unusual behavior and comparing it to historical data to detect threats early.
Phase 2: Incident response—Detect, respond and recover
High-fidelity incident detection: Combining the strengths of the Wiz Security Graph and Wiz Cloud Threat Intelligence, Wiz correlates assets in your cloud environments and incorporates real-time threat data to uncover hidden risks being exploited in the wild.
Instantaneous containment, response and in-depth analysis: The Wiz eBPF runtime sensor blocks advanced threats in containers, VMs, and serverless. Once blocked, Wiz assesses the incident’s blast radius and isolates affected resources, then provides real-time context for resolving the issues—like drift or misconfigurations—right at the root cause.
Risk-based prioritization: Wiz integrates essential contexts like asset criticality, potential business impact, and asset exposure with scoring systems like EPSS and CVSS, focusing remediation efforts on the most critical risks first.
Log collection and analysis: Wiz integrates with all major cloud providers, continuously logs user activities and configurations, parses the logs using advanced ML algorithms, and contextualizes the results with the Wiz Security Graph.
Team collaboration: Wiz surfaces investigation context within the UI and integrates with ticketing and alerting tools (like Jira, Slack, and Splunk), ensuring security, cloud, and engineering teams can work from the same source of truth during incident response.
Phase 3: Lessons learned—Identify
Automated rescans: Wiz verifies that detected issues have been resolved, ensures new ones haven’t been introduced, and provides remediation pointers for any risks discovered.
Audit-ready reports: Wiz supplies contextualized reports for assessing security posture and audit readiness.
Want to see how Wiz Defend can help your team implement the NIST IR framework in a way that’s purpose-built for the speed and complexity of the cloud?
👉 Get a personalized demo and explore how Wiz accelerates detection, containment, and audit readiness—all without adding operational overhead.
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