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The Budget-Friendly Playbook for Incident Response Clarity

During a cyberattack, does your firm descend into chaos? When every second counts, confusion over who's in charge, who calls cyber insurance, and who contacts clients can turn a manageable incident into a financial and reputational disaster. This lack of a clear chain of command and defined roles is a critical vulnerability for small law firms.

This playbook provides a powerful, budget-conscious framework to establish clear roles and a decisive chain of command. By deploying the open-source security platform Wazuh, you gain robust internal threat detection without expensive software licenses. This is paired with a pre-negotiated incident response retainer from industry leader Kroll, ensuring that when a major incident is detected, you have a defined escalation path to world-class experts. This solution requires in-house technical talent to manage the monitoring system but provides an enterprise-grade response capability at a fraction of the cost.

Expected Outcomes

  • Establish a clear chain of command for cybersecurity incidents.
  • Eliminate confusion with pre-defined roles and escalation paths.
  • Drastically reduce response time by having an expert IR firm on retainer.
  • Maintain confidential communication during a crisis, even if primary systems are compromised.
  • Minimize the financial and reputational impact of a breach through a structured, decisive response.

Core Tools in This Stack

Kroll Incident Response

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Kroll provides an incident response retainer service that gives organizations immediate, 24x7 access to elite cybersecurity experts for rapid response to cyber incidents like ransomware, business email compromise, and nation-state attacks.

Key Features
  • 24x7 Global Incident Response Hotline
  • Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR)
  • Ransomware Negotiation and Remediation
  • Proprietary Threat Intelligence Integration
  • Breach Notification and Call Center Services
  • Proactive Readiness Assessments and Tabletop Exercises
Ideal For

Company Size: Small, Medium, Large

Industries: Technology & Software, Business & Professional Services, Retail & E-commerce, Creative & Media, Education & Non-Profit, Health & Wellness, Other

Pricing

Model: Retainer-based, Contact for Pricing

Tier: High-End

Ease of Use

Straightforward

Wazuh

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Wazuh is a free and open source security platform that unifies XDR and SIEM capabilities. It protects workloads across on-premises, virtualized, containerized, and cloud-based environments, providing comprehensive security visibility, threat detection, and incident response.

Key Features
  • SIEM (Security Information and Event Management)
  • XDR (Extended Detection and Response)
  • Log Data Analysis
  • File Integrity Monitoring (FIM)
  • Vulnerability Detection
  • Configuration Assessment (SCA)
  • Incident Response Capabilities
  • Regulatory Compliance (e.g., PCI DSS, GDPR, HIPAA)
  • Cloud Security Monitoring (AWS, Azure, GCP)
  • Container Security Monitoring
Ideal For

Company Size: Micro, Small, Medium, Large

Industries: Technology & Software, Business & Professional Services, Retail & E-commerce, Education & Non-Profit, Health & Wellness, Other

Pricing

Model: Open Source, Subscription

Tier: Free (Self-Hosted)

Ease of Use

Moderate

Signal

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A free, open-source, and end-to-end encrypted messaging application for instant messaging, voice, and video calls. Developed by the non-profit Signal Foundation, it prioritizes user privacy with no ads or trackers.

Key Features
  • State-of-the-art end-to-end encryption (Signal Protocol)
  • HD voice and video calls
  • Encrypted group chats
  • Disappearing messages
  • No ads and no trackers
  • Cross-platform support (iOS, Android, Desktop)
  • View-once media
  • Note to Self feature for private note-taking
Ideal For

Company Size: Small

Industries: Technology & Software, Education & Non-Profit

Pricing

Model: Free, Donation-based

Tier: Free

Ease of Use

Easy

The Workflow

graph TD subgraph "Open-Source Monitoring with On-Demand Retainer" direction LR N0["Kroll Incident Response"] N1["Wazuh"] N2["Signal"] N1 -- "Submits alert to create case" --> N0 N1 -- "Sends notification on case creation" --> N2 end classDef blue fill:#3498db,stroke:#2980b9,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff; classDef green fill:#2ecc71,stroke:#27ae60,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff; classDef orange fill:#f39c12,stroke:#d35400,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff; class N0 blue; class N1 blue; class N2 blue;

Integration Logic

  • Wazuh Alert to Kroll Triage

    When a Wazuh alert meets a pre-defined severity threshold (e.g., rule level 12 or higher), it triggers an Active Response script on the Wazuh manager. This Python script parses the alert's details (e.g., rule description, agent IP, full log). It then makes a REST API call to the Kroll Incident Response platform's intake endpoint, submitting the alert data to automatically create a new triage case. Upon receiving a success confirmation and a case ID from Kroll, the script formats a concise notification message and uses the signal-cli tool to send it to a pre-configured Signal group for the security on-call team.

Eliminate Cyberattack Chaos

Download your budget-friendly playbook to define roles and create a clear action plan for when crisis strikes.