Cyberdudebivash

Author: CyberDudeBivash — cyberbivash.blogspot.com | Published: Oct 11, 2025 — Updated:

TL;DR

• This playbook shows a prioritized, human+AI workflow to recover critical services and restore data within 24 hours after a ransomware event — focused on containment, prioritized restores, backup validation, and automation-safe restores.
• Follow the 6-step 24-hour timeline below, run the AI-assisted verification and orchestration steps to speed restores, and apply the SOC hunts and quick checks to reduce re-encryption risk. (References: CISA, Microsoft, NIST, FBI.) 

Why a 24-hour recovery playbook matters

Attackers expect you to be slow. The faster you contain, validate backups, and restore critical services, the lower the operational and reputational impact. Government and industry playbooks stress tested backups, prioritized restores, and immediate coordination with law enforcement and incident response partners. 

High-level assumptions (read first)

• You have offline / immutable backups or air-gapped copies available. If you do not, recovery within 24 hours may not be possible.
• Endpoint & network telemetry is being collected (EDR, Syslog, NetFlow, backup logs) so you can detect re-infection vectors and validate restored systems.
• Human decision-makers (IT, security, legal, communications) are reachable and empowered to approve prioritized restores during the 24-hour window.

The 24-hour playbook — prioritized, step-by-step

Hour 0 — First 60 minutes: Contain, triage, and declare

1. Declare an incident & stand up the IR war room. Include IT ops, security, legal, communications and vendor contacts.
2. Isolate impacted segments. Remove affected hosts from the network, disable VPN slices used for admin access, and block identified C2 domains/IPs at the edge. Preserve evidence — do not wipe disks. 
3. Identify scope and variant. Quickly determine which systems show encryption indicators, ransom notes, or abnormal mass file modifications. Use EDR alerts, file timestamps and backup failure logs to map impact.
4. Contact authorities and insurers. Notify legal counsel, your cyber-insurer (if applicable) and law enforcement per policy (FBI/IC3 as needed). The FBI recommends contacting them early for coordination.

Hour 1–4: Validate backups, prioritize services, and stage recovery targets

1. Declare critical service priority (RTO/RPO drill-down). Which services must be restored first to keep the business alive? (Auth, email, order processing, EHR, billing, domain controllers — in that order for many orgs.)
2. Locate and validate backups. Identify offline / immutable copies for each critical service and snapshot IDs. Run quick integrity checks (checksums) on backup metadata before any restores. Microsoft and CISA guidance both emphasize tested backups as primary recovery path. 
3. Stage segmented restore VLANs / isolated recovery network. Bring up a clean recovery network (isolated from production) to restore and sanity-check systems without risk of cross-contamination.

Hour 4–12: AI-assisted validation + automated safe restores (bulk of the work)

Use AI tools to speed integrity checks, prioritize file restores, and orchestrate safe rollouts — but keep human approval gates.

1. Run AI-assisted backup triage. Feed backup manifests, timestamps, and backup metadata into an AI triage tool to automatically classify backups by freshness, file-change rates, and likelihood of prior compromise. AI can quickly highlight the latest uncompromised snapshot versions and the files most likely targeted by the ransomware. (See product & detection notes below.) 
2. Automate integrity checks. For selected backup snapshots, run automated checksum compares and test mounts in the isolated recovery VLAN. Use scripts or orchestration runbooks to validate file-system metadata and scan restored files with updated AV/anti-ransomware engines before promoting to production. Microsoft recommends scanning backups before restore to avoid reinfection. 
3. Priority restores (start with identity & authentication). Restore identity services and authentication first (AD/SSO), then core infrastructure (DNS, PKI), followed by business-critical apps. Restoring auth early prevents attacker persistence through stolen credentials. Always rebuild domain controllers from known-good system state or backups you validated — do not promote potentially infected images.
4. Use short, reversible blocks for post-restore hardening. After each restore, apply temporary network restrictions (allow-lists, deny all except explicitly permitted management IPs) and high-visibility monitoring for 24–72 hours while systems stabilize.
5. Human-in-the-loop approval. Every automated restore must require an approval step: a named person signs off before the orchestrator rolls the change into production VLANs. This prevents runaway automation from promoting a compromised snapshot.

Hour 12–18: Rebuild and remediation

1. Re-image or rebuild infected endpoints. For desktop fleets and servers that showed active compromise, re-image from gold images after credential rotation and validation — do not attempt to “clean” suspect systems in place unless DFIR advises otherwise.
2. Rotate all credentials & secrets. Especially service accounts, admin passwords, API keys and any credentials stored in plaintext on compromised hosts. Replace credentials that may have been exfiltrated before returning systems to full production.
3. Hunt for persistence & lateral movement. Use EDR and network telemetry to detect any persistence mechanisms, scheduled tasks, or unusual service accounts that may survive restores. Continue high-fidelity monitoring on restored systems. 

Hour 18–24: Validate, communicate, and transition to recovery ops

1. End-to-end validation: Run acceptance tests for restored services (login, basic transactions, backups resume) and confirm business owners sign off on service health.
2. Communicate: Notify stakeholders, legal and customers with approved holding statements. Be factual and measured — coordinate messaging with legal counsel.
3. After-action & documentation: Preserve the timeline, collect artifacts, and plan a post-incident review to harden controls that enabled the breach (MFA gaps, backup weaknesses, third-party exposure).

How AI speeds this process (safe patterns)

• Backup triage: AI ingests backup manifests, file-change timelines and EDR telemetry to rank snapshots by “likelihood clean” so humans can restore the best candidates first. This shaves hours off manual validation. 
• Automated integrity checks: automation kicks off checksum comparisons, AV scans and file-type sanity checks in parallel across many snapshots and surfaces any flagged files for analyst review.
• Smart prioritization: AI can prioritize which directories, VMs, or database tables to restore first based on business impact scoring and recent access patterns (e.g., customer DB tables used in checkout systems).
• Playbook orchestration: an orchestration engine (with AI suggestions) triggers restores, runs validations, and pauses for human approval — making the workflow repeatable and auditable.

Important: Do not allow AI to make permanent destructive actions without explicit human sign-off. Use AI for triage, categorization, and suggested actions only.

SOC hunts & checks — run these immediately

Tune thresholds for your environment. These are defensive hunts to detect continued encryption or re-infection attempts.

# Splunk: detect rapid file modification counts (example)
index=edr event_type=file_write OR event_type=file_create
| stats count by host, user, process_name
| where count > 500

# Elastic/EQL: mass file rename / extension change pattern
file_events
| where event.action in ("renamed","modified") and file.extension in ("crypt","locked","enc")
| transaction host maxspan=5m
| where event.count > 100

# Generic: detect backup failures or unexpected deletions
index=backup source="backup_logs"
| stats count by backup_job, status
| where status="FAILED" OR status="CORRUPTED"

Quick Sigma example — file-mod storm (defensive)

title: High rate of file writes (possible encryption activity)
logsource:
  product: edr
detection:
  selection:
    EventID: 4663
    ObjectType: File
  condition: selection
  timeframe: 5m
  aggregation:
    - HostName
    - User
  threshold:
    count: '>500'
level: high

Backup validation checklist (must-run before each restore)

• Confirm backup snapshot timestamp & retention policy.
• Run checksum/hash comparison of restored files against backup manifest.
• Scan backup snapshots with updated AV/anti-ransomware engines in the isolated recovery VLAN. 
• Validate application-level integrity (DB consistency checks, app smoke tests).
• Check backup logs for signs of tampering or deletion attempts preceding the incident. 

Post-recovery hardening (first 30 days)

• Enforce MFA for all admin and remote access accounts; remove legacy auth where possible.
• Rotate all keys, service passwords and any credentials that may have been exposed.
• Adopt immutable, air-gapped or cloud-based immutability for backups and enforce short RPOs for critical systems. CISA emphasizes offline/immutable backups as a primary defense. 
• Run enterprise-wide phishing simulations and credential hygiene training to reduce initial-access risk.
• Enhance monitoring for early file-activity anomalies and data-exfil patterns; tune EDR & network detection to lower detection gaps. 

When to involve law enforcement & third parties

• Contact law enforcement (FBI/IC3 in the U.S.) early if the incident is material, involves extortion, or has cross-border implications — they can provide intelligence and coordination. 
• Engage forensic experts for complex incidents, legal counsel for notification obligations, and your insurer for coverage and vendor contacts.

Sample incident runbook (printable)

1. Incident declared — war room active.
2. Isolate infected VLANs and collect EDR snapshots.
3. Locate backup snapshot candidates, run AI triage to rank clean snapshots.
4. Mount snapshot in recovery VLAN, run checksum + AV scan.
5. Restore identity services first, then core infra, then apps; require approval before each promotion to prod.
6. Rotate credentials and monitor restored systems for 72 hours.

Recommended tools & quick buys (affiliate CTAs)

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

Endpoint detection and rollback capabilities to limit post-exploit impact and detect mass encryption patterns.Protect with Kaspersky

Edureka — DFIR & Backup Training

Upskill your incident responders and backup operators on rapid recovery, playbook orchestration and backup-forensics.Train teams (Edureka)

TurboVPN — Secure admin access

Lock down admin remote sessions to trusted networks during recovery; pair with MFA and session recording for auditability.Get TurboVPN

Explore the CyberDudeBivash Ecosystem

Our Core Services:

• CISO Advisory & Incident Response
• Disaster Recovery & Backup Forensics
• Rapid DFIR & Threat Hunting
• AI-assisted Triage & Orchestration

Follow Our Main Blog for Daily Threat IntelVisit Our Official Site & Portfolio

POWERED BY CYBERDUDEBIVASH

Hashtags:

#CyberDudeBivash #RansomwareRecovery #IR #DFIR #Backup #AIforSecurity #IncidentResponse