The Incident Response Challenge 2020 — Results and Solutions Announced

The Challenge consisted of 25 incidents, in increasing
difficulty, all inspired by real-life scenarios that required
participants to go beyond the textbook solution and think outside
of the box. Over 2,500 IR professionals competed to be recognized
as the top incident responders.

Now that the competition is over (however, the challenge
website^[2] is still open for anyone
who wants to practice solving the challenges), Cynet makes the
detailed
solutions^[3] available as a free
resource for knowledge and inspiration.

Providing the thought process and detailed steps to solve each
of the challenges will serve as a training aid and knowledge base
for incident responders.

The Fine Art of Forensic Investigation

The core of any IR processes is the forensic investigation. It
uncovers the critical path from the initial stage of suspicion or
limited attack view to the concrete and actionable knowledge on the
attack’s root cause and the impact that is essential for recovery
and restoration operations.

Example of a challenge solution

Forensic investigation is more of fine art than a commoditized
line of trade; both talent and creativity play a significant role
in building a high edge incident responder. Becoming a highly
capable incident responder requires many traits and a lot of time
in the trenches learning from others and learning from
mistakes.

In light of the continuous increase in the volume and
sophistication of attacks, incident responders must be sharper and
more capable than ever.

The IR Challenge could hardly come at a more appropriate time,
and hopefully others will follow suit with similar challenges to
help advance the knowledge and skills of the entire IR
community.

Cynet 360 for Incident Response

Cynet 360 is the tool of choice for IR professionals. Its
enterprise-grade distribution infrastructure enables responders to
rapidly gain visibility into thousands of endpoints in minutes,
accelerating and optimizing the initial investigation stage by
identifying suspicious endpoints, processes, user accounts, and
network connections, closely inspect them for further analysis.

Because Cynet considers incident responders to be its ultimate
users, they’ve made Cynet 360 available at no cost for any
responder that wants to use it in the course of his IR engagements
(learn more about Cynet free offering for incident responders
here^[4]).

Download the Incident Response
Challenge solutions^[5]
here.

^[1]