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The MDR Retainer Playbook: Your On-Demand Cybersecurity Incident Response Team

Small law firms often have an incident response plan on paper, but when a real cyber crisis hits, who has the technical skills to execute it? Without dedicated IT or cybersecurity staff, partners and administrative personnel are forced into technical roles they're not trained for. This leads to critical delays, costly mistakes, and a heightened risk of breaching client data confidentiality, putting your firm's reputation on the line.

This playbook outlines how to engage a mid-tier Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) on a formal retainer. Your expert partner deploys and manages Wazuh, a powerful open-source security agent, across your firm's endpoints and servers for 24/7 monitoring. When an incident occurs, the MSSP's team takes charge, using professional forensic tools like Autopsy to analyze the threat. All communication is delivered swiftly through a pre-established secure channel (Signal), ensuring you have expert guidance and a clear path to resolution, all governed by a detailed Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Expected Outcomes

  • Eliminate the cybersecurity skills gap by having a dedicated team of experts on call.
  • Clearly defined roles and responsibilities, ensuring a swift and professional response during a crisis.
  • Gain 24/7/365 security monitoring and threat detection without the cost of a full-time internal team.
  • Reduce the risk of costly mistakes and compliance violations by relying on proven processes and tools.
  • Maintain client trust and confidentiality with a robust, expert-led incident response capability.

Core Tools in This Stack

Wazuh

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Wazuh is a free and open-source security platform that unifies XDR and SIEM capabilities. It is used for threat detection, incident response, and compliance management across on-premises, virtualized, containerized, and cloud environments.

Key Features
  • Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
  • Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
  • Log Data Analysis
  • Intrusion and Threat Detection
  • File Integrity Monitoring (FIM)
  • Vulnerability Detection
  • Configuration Assessment
  • Incident Response Automation
  • Regulatory Compliance (PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR)
  • Cloud and Container Security Monitoring
Ideal For

Company Size: Micro, Small, Medium, Large

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

Pricing

Model: Free, Open Source, Subscription

Tier: Free

Ease of Use

Moderate

Autopsy

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Autopsy is a premier, end-to-end open source digital forensics platform. It is designed for investigating hard drives, smartphones, and other digital media, providing a graphical interface and a comprehensive feature set for law enforcement, military, and corporate examiners.

Key Features
  • Timeline Analysis
  • Keyword Search
  • Web Artifacts Extraction
  • Registry Analysis
  • Multi-user Case Collaboration
  • Extensive File System Support (NTFS, FAT, HFS+, Ext, etc.)
  • Hash Database Filtering
  • Automated Reporting (HTML, XLS)
Ideal For

Company Size: Small, Medium

Industries: Technology & Software, Business & Professional Services, Education & Non-Profit

Pricing

Model: Free, Open Source

Tier: Free

Ease of Use

Medium

Signal

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Signal is a free, open-source, and privacy-focused messaging app that offers state-of-the-art end-to-end encrypted text, voice, and video communication. Developed by a non-profit foundation, it ensures no ads, no trackers, and that user data is never shared or sold.

Key Features
  • State-of-the-art end-to-end encryption (Signal Protocol)
  • Encrypted HD voice and video calls
  • Secure group chats
  • Disappearing messages with configurable timers
  • View-once media
  • No ads or trackers
  • Cross-platform synchronization (iOS, Android, Desktop)
  • Open Source codebase
  • Funded by donations, not user data
Ideal For

Company Size: Small

Industries: Technology & Software, Education & Non-Profit

Pricing

Model: Free

Tier: Free

Ease of Use

Very Easy

The Workflow

graph TD subgraph "Managed Detection & Response (MDR) Retainer" direction LR N0["Wazuh"] N1["Autopsy"] N2["Signal"] N0 -- "Sends forensic artifacts for analysis" --> N1 N0 -- "Sends incident summary" --> N2 N1 -- "Sends case link" --> 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

  • MDR Playbook Synchronization

    This integration is orchestrated by a central Python script. The workflow is as follows: 1. **Trigger**: A high-severity alert (e.g., rule level > 12) is generated in Wazuh. 2. **Action (Wazuh)**: A Wazuh active response script or a webhook triggers the central Python script, passing the alert details (agent ID, IP, rule description). 3. **Data Collection**: The script uses the Wazuh API to gather more context about the agent and can trigger a predefined action to collect forensic artifacts (e.g., memory dump, critical log files, MFT) from the endpoint. 4. **Data Ingestion (Autopsy)**: The collected artifacts are transferred to a staging server. The script then calls the Autopsy command-line interface to create a new case and add the artifacts as a data source, initiating pre-configured analysis pipelines (e.g., keyword search, hash lookup). 5. **Notification (Signal)**: The script formats a summary of the incident, including the Wazuh alert, the affected endpoint, and a link to the Autopsy case location. It then uses a Signal client (like `signal-cli`) to send this summary as a secure message to a predefined incident response group.

Activate Your On-Demand Response Plan

Learn how to move from a paper plan to a crisis-ready team of on-demand experts, protecting your firm's reputation and client confidentiality.