CNX-SEC-11

Protocol 11: Security Breach Response & Containment

Standardized incident response framework for detecting, containing, eradicating, and recovering from security breaches across CloudNexus infrastructure and client environments.

Version 2.4.1 (Stable)

Classification Internal / Client-Facing

Effective Date 2025-03-15

Review Cycle Quarterly + Post-Incident

Owner CISO / IR Team Lead

Compliance SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR, CCPA

1 Objective & Scope

Protocol 11 establishes a unified response methodology for any confirmed or suspected security breach affecting CloudNexus cloud infrastructure, managed services, or client workloads. It applies to all SOC analysts, security engineers, DevOps personnel, and authorized client liaisons.

In Scope: Unauthorized access, data exfiltration, ransomware, privilege escalation, supply-chain compromise, DDoS-induced data corruption, and third-party API token leakage.

Out of Scope: Planned maintenance, non-malicious performance degradation, and customer-initiated self-service configuration errors (handled via Support Protocol 04).

2 Severity Classification

All incidents must be triaged and assigned a severity level within 30 minutes of initial detection. Severity dictates response velocity, resource allocation, and communication cadence.

Level	Impact Description	Response Window	Escalation
SEV-1	Active exploitation, data breach, or infrastructure compromise affecting >100 clients or core control plane	Immediate / 0-15 min	CISO → Executive IR Team
SEV-2	Containable breach, lateral movement detected, or vulnerability exploited in staging/non-prod	0-60 min	IR Lead → Security Engineering
SEV-3	Policy violation, failed brute-force, or anomalous API behavior with no confirmed data loss	0-4 hours	SOC L1 → SOC L2
SEV-4	False positive, scan activity, or minor config drift requiring remediation	Next business day	Assigned to ticket queue

3 Response Protocol Phases

Phase 01

Detection & Triage

Validate alerts from WAF, EDR, CloudTrail, and custom anomaly detectors. Preserve initial logs. Assign incident ID and severity.

Phase 02

Containment

Isolate affected instances. Revoke compromised credentials. Block malicious IPs/subnets. Enable network segmentation via micro-segmentation rules.

Phase 03

Eradication

Remove persistent threats. Patch exploited vulnerabilities. Rotate all shared secrets, API keys, and certificates. Rebuild from known-good images.

Phase 04

Recovery

Restore services from immutable backups. Validate integrity via hash verification. Gradual traffic restoration with enhanced monitoring.

Phase 05

Post-Mortem

Document timeline, root cause, and remediation steps. Update detection rules. Conduct blameless retrospective. Archive forensics per retention policy.

Technical Containment Commands (Reference)

# Isolate compromised VM instance
cnx-cli network isolate --instance i-0x8a9f2e --reason "CNX-SEC-11-SEV1"

# Revoke compromised IAM role & rotate keys
cnx-cli auth revoke --role prod-deployer --force-rotate --notify security-lead

# Snapshot forensics before termination
cnx-cli forensic snapshot --volume vol-8821a --destination s3://cnx-ir-evidence/--encrypt AES256
                

4 Communication & Escalation Matrix

All external communication must be approved by Legal & CISO. Internal updates flow through #sec-incident-11 on Slack with threaded updates every 30 minutes for SEV-1/2.

L1 SOC Analyst Initial triage, log collection, severity assignment 0-15 min

↓

L2 Security Engineer Containment execution, threat hunting, forensic imaging 15-60 min

↓

IR Team Lead Orchestrate cross-team response, client notification prep 60-120 min

↓

CISO / Executive Final approval for breach disclosure, regulatory filings, media response Post-Containment

5 Post-Incident Requirements

Incident Report: Must be drafted within 48 hours of containment and archived in the IR Vault.
Detection Gaps: Any missed indicators must be fed back into SIEM/SOAR rule engine within 72 hours.
Client Notification: SEV-1/2 clients receive impact assessment within 2 hours (internal) / 24 hours (external) per SLA.
Compliance Filing: GDPR/CCPA breach notices filed within 72 hours if PII/financial data confirmed affected.

Appendix A: Emergency Contact Directory

IR Lead (On-Call): +1-888-SEC-9111 | ir-lead@cloudnexus.internal
CISO Direct: security@cloudnexus.internal | PGP: 8A9F 2E1C 4D0B 7F3E
Forensics Lab: forensics-submission@cloudnexus.internal
Client Security Liaison: client-security@cloudnexus.com
                

⚠️ This document contains operational security procedures. Distribution outside authorized personnel violates CloudNexus Information Security Policy v4.1. Do not forward externally.