Incident Response & Recovery Framework

Threats mitigated

• T2 Tool Misuse

  Manipulation of tools, APIs, or environment access to perform unintended actions or access unauthorized resources, including exploitation of access to external systems.

• T3 Privilege Compromise

  Breaking information system boundaries through context collapse, causing unauthorized data access/leakage, or exploiting tool privileges to gain unauthorized access to systems.

• T8 Repudiation & Untraceability

  Making agent actions difficult to trace through workflow manipulation, obscuring decision trails in reasoning chains, or tampering with evidence in memory.

• T11 Unexpected RCE and Code Attacks

  Tools or environments enabling unexpected code execution, presenting direct risks to code execution environments.

• T13 Rogue Agents in Multi-Agent Systems

  Compromised AI agent activity outside monitoring limits or orchestration in multi-agent systems.

• T17 Supply Chain Compromise

  Vulnerable, malicious or outdated components enter the agent through models, libraries, tools, plugins, prompt templates, build environments or framework updates.

OWASP AISVS coverage

The AISVS 1.01 chapters and verification requirements this control helps satisfy.

C3 Model Lifecycle Management & Change Control

• C3.3.1 Level 2

  Verify that production deployments implement rollout mechanisms with automated rollback triggers.

• C3.3.2 Level 2

  Verify that rollback capabilities restore the complete model state.

C8 Memory, Embeddings & Vector Database Security

• C8.3.2 Level 2

  Verify that memory can be reset.

C9 Orchestration & Agentic Security

• C9.6.1 Level 1

  Verify that a manual kill-switch mechanism exists to immediately halt AI model inference and outputs.

• C9.6.3 Level 3

  Verify that kill-switch commands are implemented through an out-of-band channel that is isolated from the agent runtime.

• C9.1.3 Level 2

  Verify that a swarm-level kill-switch exists that can halt all active agent instances.

C12 Monitoring, Logging & Anomaly Detection

• C12.4.3 Level 2

  Verify that kill-switch activations and override commands are logged.

• C12.5.3 Level 2

  Verify that all model changes generate immutable audit records.

Design phase

Architecture, threat modelling and policy decisions made before code is written. 22 tasks.

Incident Response Architecture

• Design AI-specific incident classification and severity assessment frameworks
• Plan automated incident detection and alerting with intelligent triage
• Design incident containment strategies for different agent architectures
• Plan forensic data collection and preservation for AI systems
• Design incident communication and stakeholder notification procedures
• Plan legal and regulatory compliance for incident reporting
• Design incident recovery and business continuity procedures
• Plan post-incident analysis and lessons learned integration

AI-Specific Incident Types

• Design response procedures for prompt injection and jailbreak attacks
• Plan containment for memory poisoning and data corruption incidents
• Design recovery from tool misuse and privilege escalation events
• Plan response to rogue agent detection and containment
• Design handling of model theft and intellectual property breaches
• Plan response to bias incidents and fairness violations
• Design recovery from availability and performance incidents
• Plan handling of compliance and regulatory violations

Automated Response Design

• Design intelligent incident triage and priority assignment
• Plan automated containment and isolation procedures
• Design automated evidence collection and preservation
• Plan automated notification and escalation workflows
• Design automated recovery and restoration procedures
• Plan automated threat hunting and indicator enrichment

Build phase

Implementation, testing and hardening while the agent is developed. 43 tasks.

Incident Detection & Classification

• Build AI-specific incident detection systems:
• Prompt injection attack detection with ML classifiers
• Memory poisoning detection through content analysis
• Rogue agent behavior detection using anomaly analysis
• Tool misuse detection through permission and usage monitoring
• Model performance degradation detection with statistical monitoring
• Implement intelligent incident classification:
• Automated severity assessment based on impact and scope
• Incident type classification with confidence scoring
• Stakeholder identification and notification automation
• Priority assignment based on business impact and risk

Automated Containment Systems

• Build rapid response containment mechanisms:
• Automatic agent isolation and communication blocking
• Dynamic permission revocation and access control updates
• Network segmentation and traffic filtering
• Memory and data store isolation and protection
• Tool access suspension and capability restriction
• Deploy intelligent containment strategies:
• Risk-based containment scope determination
• Minimal impact containment with business continuity preservation
• Cascading containment for multi-agent incidents
• Recovery-oriented containment with restoration planning

Forensic & Evidence Collection

• Build comprehensive forensic capabilities:
• Automated evidence collection from logs, memory, and network traffic
• Chain of custody management with cryptographic integrity
• Timeline reconstruction and attack path analysis
• Artifact preservation and secure storage
• Expert system integration for forensic analysis automation
• Implement specialized AI forensics:
• Model state capture and analysis at incident time
• Memory content analysis and corruption assessment
• Communication flow analysis and message inspection
• Decision tree reconstruction and reasoning analysis

Recovery & Restoration

• Build automated recovery systems:
• Clean backup identification and validation
• Incremental restoration with integrity verification
• Service health validation and performance testing
• Data consistency checking and repair procedures
• Deploy intelligent recovery strategies:
• Risk-based recovery prioritization
• Gradual service restoration with monitoring
• Rollback procedures for failed recovery attempts
• Business continuity maintenance during recovery

Operations phase

Monitoring, response and continuous improvement once the agent is live. 24 tasks.

Incident Response Operations

• Operate 24/7 incident response capability with trained personnel
• Execute regular incident response drills and tabletop exercises
• Maintain incident response procedures and playbook updates
• Deploy incident response performance metrics and improvement tracking
• Execute post-incident reviews and lessons learned integration
• Maintain incident response team training and certification
• Deploy incident response tool maintenance and capability development

Forensic Operations

• Execute forensic analysis and investigation procedures
• Maintain forensic tool capabilities and expert knowledge
• Deploy expert witness support and legal testimony preparation
• Execute chain of custody management and evidence handling
• Maintain forensic laboratory capabilities and certifications
• Deploy forensic research and technique development

Recovery Operations

• Execute business continuity and disaster recovery procedures
• Maintain backup and restoration capabilities testing
• Deploy recovery performance monitoring and optimization
• Execute recovery training and capability development
• Maintain recovery documentation and procedure updates
• Deploy recovery coordination with business stakeholders

Continuous Improvement

• Execute incident response maturity assessment and improvement
• Maintain threat intelligence integration and indicator development
• Deploy industry collaboration and information sharing
• Execute research and development for emerging threats
• Maintain regulatory compliance and reporting capabilities

Tools and frameworks

Incident Response Platforms

• SOAR Platforms: Phantom/Splunk, Demisto/Cortex XSOAR, IBM Resilient, TheHive
• Ticketing Systems: Jira Service Management, ServiceNow, PagerDuty, OpsGenie
• Communication: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Mattermost for incident coordination
• Documentation: Confluence, GitBook, custom incident knowledge bases

Forensic & Analysis Tools

• Log Analysis: Splunk, ELK Stack, Graylog, Sumo Logic for incident investigation
• Network Forensics: Wireshark, NetworkMiner, Moloch, Zeek for traffic analysis
• Memory Analysis: Volatility, Rekall, custom memory forensics tools
• File System: Autopsy, Sleuth Kit, FTK for file system analysis

Containment & Recovery

• Network Isolation: Firewall automation, SDN controllers, network ACL management
• System Isolation: Orchestration tools, container management, VM isolation
• Backup & Recovery: Veeam, Commvault, cloud-native backup solutions
• Configuration Management: Ansible, Puppet, Chef for automated recovery

Monitoring & Detection

• SIEM Systems: Splunk Enterprise Security, IBM QRadar, Azure Sentinel
• EDR Solutions: CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Carbon Black, Microsoft Defender
• Custom Detection: Sigma rules, Yara rules, custom ML detection models
• Threat Intelligence: MISP, ThreatConnect, Recorded Future, VirusTotal Enterprise

Related controls

• M13 Secure Development Lifecycle Integration shares T2, T3, T8, T11, T13, T17
• M6 Comprehensive Security Monitoring & Auditing shares T8, T13, T2, T3, T17
• M17 Supply Chain Security & Provenance shares T2, T3, T11, T13, T17
• M7 Zero Trust & Least Privilege Access shares T2, T3, T11, T13

References

• NIST Incident Response Guide
• SANS Incident Response
• ENISA Incident Response