What are the four steps of Incident Response?

What are the four steps of Incident Response?

• A. Seizure, Acquisition, Analysis, Reporting
• B. Seizure, Analysis, Acquisition, Reporting
• C. Acquisition, Seizure, Analysis, Reporting
• D. Seizure, Acquisition, Reporting, Analysis

Answer: (A)

The main idea here is following a forensic-style flow that preserves evidence first, then builds from a solid copy to understand what happened. Seizure means securing the devices involved and preventing any further changes, which also helps maintain the chain of custody. Acquisition follows by creating a forensically sound copy of all relevant data, using tools that prevent altering the original data and that produce verifiable hashes. Analysis then examines that copied data to reconstruct events, identify indicators of compromise, and determine how the incident unfolded. Reporting wraps things up by documenting the findings, methods, and evidence in a way that stakeholders (and possibly legal authorities) can review. This order matters because you want to avoid contaminating or altering the evidence before you’ve captured and preserved it, and you want to base conclusions on a defensible copy rather than the original device. So Seizure, Acquisition, Analysis, and Reporting is the sequence that best fits a disciplined incident response workflow.

The main idea here is following a forensic-style flow that preserves evidence first, then builds from a solid copy to understand what happened. Seizure means securing the devices involved and preventing any further changes, which also helps maintain the chain of custody. Acquisition follows by creating a forensically sound copy of all relevant data, using tools that prevent altering the original data and that produce verifiable hashes. Analysis then examines that copied data to reconstruct events, identify indicators of compromise, and determine how the incident unfolded. Reporting wraps things up by documenting the findings, methods, and evidence in a way that stakeholders (and possibly legal authorities) can review.

This order matters because you want to avoid contaminating or altering the evidence before you’ve captured and preserved it, and you want to base conclusions on a defensible copy rather than the original device. So Seizure, Acquisition, Analysis, and Reporting is the sequence that best fits a disciplined incident response workflow.