Today I’m excited to announce Silverfort’s Identity-First Incident Response (IR) Solution, which flips the script on the traditional IR process by starting with finding and isolating compromised user identities. Rather than focusing on malware-infected machines first, our solution allows IR teams to quickly identify and contain compromised user identities, the most common entry point for attackers. Designed to complement existing IR tools, this proactive approach drastically reduces the time to contain an attack, minimizes damage, and enables faster recovery.
By starting with identity, IR teams can detect and block authentication attempts to pinpoint compromised accounts and instantly isolate them. This approach allows for quicker identification of threats compared to traditional methods, which often begin with the lengthy and complex process of tracking down infected machines or monitoring network traffic. Once attackers gain access, they can move laterally through your network. Focusing on identity will help reduce damage more quickly and effectively than examining endpoints at first.
Eric Haller, Silverfort advisor and former VP of SecOps & GRC at Palo Alto Networks explains it best:
“Identifying impacted assets while responding to large incidents involving lateral movement is a serious challenge. Often, when deploying containment actions, practitioners must make difficult decisions with incomplete information, balancing attacker damage against business disruption. Being able to immediately challenge all authentication events while allowing business operations to continue is like a surgeon slowing a patient’s heartbeat to perform surgery. You can effectively put an entire company ‘under’ while you investigate the source of the issue – without killing productivity. With Silverfort, teams get actionable telemetry about what needs to be contained so they can keep their businesses operational while they investigate and figure out the best path towards recovery and remediation.”
How Silverfort Accelerates Incident Response Times
Silverfort’s Identity-First IR solution seamlessly integrates with Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems like Active Directory, Okta, PingFederate and others, enabling responders to isolate compromised accounts, contain attacks in real time and block further spread, all without needing an extensive investigation.
Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how Silverfort accelerates incident response:
Step 1: Bring the Attack to an Immediate Halt
Using MFA and identity-based segmentation, organizations can take immediate control over malicious access with Silverfort. This containment stops lateral movement in its tracks, even through tools like PowerShell or PsExec, without requiring deep manual investigation upfront. Blocking access happens instantly to prevent further spread. With Silverfort’s Authentication Firewall, organizations can block access to resources based on user identity and real-time authentication analysis.
Step 2: Rapidly Identify Compromised Accounts
Attackers will reveal themselves by triggering denied access attempts or blocked MFA challenges. Silverfort provides detailed audit trails so security teams can trace the attacker’s movements back to patient zero. By locating compromised identities early, responders can block further malicious activity and focus their forensic efforts on critical areas.
Step 3: Gradual Recovery and Attack Surface Reduction
As responders eradicate malicious activity, Silverfort helps gradually restore user access while maintaining critical security measures. The platform identifies identity-related weaknesses, such as shadow admins and unmonitored service accounts, to close security gaps and eliminate potential attack paths.
Customer Testimonial: Proven in Real-World Scenarios
One notable example of IR responders successfully using our solution comes from a Fortune 100 financial services company that recently experienced a significant breach. The attackers gained access to critical systems, threatening the security of their environment. The IR team deployed our solution across more than 100 domain controllers in under 12 hours, enforcing an access block policy for all users and resources. This rapid response contained the attack at its current state and prevented further ransomware spread.
“Silverfort immediately helped us mitigate the impact of compromised users. It was one of the most significant tools we used to analyze authentication flows and determine compromised identities as we brought our Domain Controllers back online,” said an identity leader at the company. “We worked quickly with the IR team to put blocking policies in place over the compromised identities.”
This real-world case study demonstrates how our identity-first approach drastically shortens incident response timelines, from days and weeks to mere hours, so organizations can recover with minimal disruption.
Integration with Existing Tools and Infrastructure
We designed our solution to complement existing IR tools , and to integrate seamlessly with security operations infrastructure, such as SIEM, SOAR and XDR platforms. Identity-related threat signals enrich existing incident response processes, enhancing the detection and correlation of risk signals across the entire infrastructure.
In crisis scenarios, our Authentication Firewall acts as a “kill switch” by analyzing every authentication and access attempt to critical resources and denying requests from compromised identities. By triggering these policies, IR teams can contain the attack, block further access, and continue investigating with full visibility into what has been compromised.
Silverfort’s real-time blocking policies, forensic insights, and MFA enforcement not only stop an attack in its tracks but also provide the IR team with actionable data to ensure secure recovery.
Expedite Incident Response with Silverfort
Silverfort’s Identity-First Incident Response provides a fresh approach to IR – one that’s faster, more precise, and incredibly effective. By focusing on compromised identities rather than infected machines, security teams stay ahead of attackers. The result? Shorter recovery times, reduced damage, and the confidence to tackle even the most sophisticated threats.
For organizations looking to modernize their incident response strategies, we’re excited to offer a powerful, proven solution that integrates seamlessly with existing infrastructure while delivering unparalleled protection against identity-based attacks.
Interested in learning more? Check out our IR playbook or request a demo. Our team will be with you every step of the way.