Why Hybrid-Cloud Attacks Challenge Incident Response

Summary

Hybrid-cloud attacks can move quickly through APIs and centralized identities, while fragmented data complicates investigations. The article explains how shared threat intelligence can help defenders respond and investigate more effectively.

Key points

• Cloud environments’ shared characteristics can help attackers automate and reuse attack playbooks.
• A compromised credential may provide access to cloud resources through centralized identity management, including in hybrid attacks.
• API-enabled changes can happen quickly, making rapid response important to limit damage.
• Hybrid investigations are complicated by diverse technologies, incompatible data sources, and log-retention tradeoffs.
• The article advocates combining external threat intelligence with organization-specific intelligence to support incident response.
• The series’ later installments are described as covering a real-world hybrid-cloud attack and an investigation using AWS VPC flow logs and threat intelligence.