$4.4 million. That’s what Colonial Pipeline paid to ransomware operators in May 2021, but the ransom itself barely scratched the surface of the true cost. The six-day shutdown of America’s largest fuel pipeline triggered gas shortages across the Eastern seaboard, panic buying that emptied stations from Florida to Virginia, and emergency government intervention to stabilize energy markets. The attack vector? A single compromised password on an old VPN account that lacked multi-factor authentication.

Cisco Talos Incident Response (Talos IR) handles these types of crises daily. We’re on the front lines of single-server compromises to nation-state attacks on critical infrastructure. With proven expertise and global reach, we’re ready to respond so your organization can recover stronger, faster, and more resilient than before.

The reality gap

Most security teams imagine incident response as a purely technical exercise: analyze threats, isolate systems, remove malware, restore from backups. The reality is far messier.

Crises rarely follow a playbook. A ransomware investigation might uncover three separate compromises stretching back months, sometimes years. The ransomware event that triggered the emergency call? That’s just the finale. Attackers may have spent weeks mapping networks through legitimate administrative tools, PowerShell, Remote Desktop Protocol, and standard Windows commands that bypass traditional security monitoring. No malware signatures detected, and no anomalous executables to blocked…until one day a small change in Windows Group Policy resulted in the mass deployment of malware.

Meanwhile, regulatory clocks start ticking. GDPR Article 33 mandates 72-hour breach notification. SEC rules require public companies to disclose material incidents within four days. Each requirement pulls resources from active response efforts.

The preparation paradox

Here’s what organizations discover too late: Incident response retainers cost a fraction of what emergency rates do during global cyber events. When Log4j vulnerabilities emerged, organizations with existing retainers received immediate support, and were met with a sharp understanding of regulatory requirements, critical system dependencies, normal vs. abnormal system behavior. Others waited days and weeks while responders triaged based on severity and existing relationships.

Building this relationship ahead of time also helps to streamline response, ensure swift actions are taken, and ensure teams are familiar with technology stacks and can work together effectively. Learning critical institutional knowledge during a crisis, when every second matters, can cost organizations dearly.

Beyond the emergency

Recovery marks the beginning, not the end. Sophisticated adversaries leave multiple persistence mechanisms. Miss one backdoor, one scheduled task, or one modified firewall rule, and they return weeks later, often selling access to other criminal groups. The forensic investigation continues long after systems are restored. Legal teams need evidence chains for potential litigation. Boards demand assurance that similar attacks won’t succeed again. The difference between organizations that emerge stronger and those that simply survive is that the former understand incident response before needing it.

To learn more about how Talos IR can help your organization prepare, respond, and recover from cyber incidents, read our complete behind-the-scenes analysis, where we walk through what really happens during an IR engagement, or contact us today.

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