Incident Response
When an incident hits a branch office, minutes matter.
Containment, forensic evidence preservation, remediation, and coordinated communication — with the evidence trail regulators and insurers will demand. FCI’s 24/7/365 U.S.-based SOC has handled thousands of financial services cyber incidents.
Incident response is the protocol that runs when a cyber event hits: device isolation, forensic evidence preservation, remediation, and coordinated communication with the firm’s compliance team. FCI’s 24/7/365 U.S.-based SOC executes it and documents every step in the FCI Portal — the evidence trail regulators and insurers will demand.
The Problem
Monitoring without response is an alert that no one acts on.
An incident at a branch office does not wait for business hours. Credentials get phished on a Friday night; a device starts misbehaving over a weekend. What happens in the first minutes and hours determines whether the event stays a contained incident or becomes a reportable breach — and whether the firm can prove which one it was.
Most firms discover the gap at the worst possible moment: when a cyber event occurs, their IT provider cannot perform forensic investigation, preserve evidence, or manage regulatory notification.
Monitoring without response is an alert that no one acts on. A dashboard that lights up at 2 a.m. protects nothing unless a team is on duty to isolate the device, preserve the evidence, and start remediation.
When a cyber event occurs, most firms discover their IT provider cannot perform forensic investigation, preserve evidence, or manage regulatory notification. General IT skill does not cover breach response.
FCI has seen IT providers delete forensic evidence during response — the digital equivalent of wiping fingerprints from a crime scene. Once the evidence is gone, the firm cannot prove what happened, or what didn’t.
After a breach, regulators and insurers ask two questions: what happened at the affected location, and what was the state of controls everywhere else? Both demand documentation the firm must already have.
FCI’s Incident Response Protocol
From alert to evidence — every step executed and documented.
FCI’s SOC operates 24/7, 365 days per year, U.S.-based, with a full incident response protocol. Every step is documented in the FCI Portal for regulatory reporting — so the response and the evidence of the response are the same work.
The affected device is isolated the moment the incident is confirmed — cutting the attacker off from the rest of the firm before the damage spreads. Containment first, so a single compromised endpoint stays a single compromised endpoint.
Evidence is preserved before anything is wiped or rebuilt. The forensic record is what later proves what happened, when it happened, and what controls were in place at the time — to the FBI, regulators, and cyber insurers.
The threat is removed and systems are restored. When an event requires Microsoft-level access — a locked-out global admin, a compromised tenant — FCI’s Microsoft Partner access provides a recovery path most IT firms don’t have.
Communication with the firm’s compliance team is coordinated from the first hour, and every step is documented in the FCI Portal for regulatory reporting. The firm’s account of the event is consistent because it is built on one record.
After the Breach
Regulators and insurers ask two questions. Most firms can only answer one.
After a breach, regulators and insurers ask two questions: what happened at the affected location, and what was the state of controls everywhere else? If the answer to the second question is “we don’t know” or “we would need to check,” the exposure multiplies.
The forensic record answers it. Device isolation, preserved evidence, and a documented remediation trail show exactly what the attacker reached and what they did not. Without that record, the firm is guessing — and a guess is not a defensible answer to a regulator or an insurer.
This is the question that catches firms off guard. The FCI Portal shows real-time enforcement status across every endpoint — so the firm can demonstrate that the incident was contained, not systemic. One breached branch stays one breached branch, and the evidence proves it.
Notification & Documentation
The technical voice in the room — with the evidence to back it up.
When the forensics conclude, the firm has to present the results to people whose questions are technical and whose consequences are large. FCI stands with the firm in those conversations as the technical representation — with the regulator, the FBI, and the cyber insurer. The firm’s voice remains the firm’s voice. But when the question becomes what exactly happened, when did it happen, and what controls were in place at the time? — FCI has the answer and the documentation to support it.
In one case, FCI worked alongside the FBI to clear a client whose firm had been cited as the FBI’s primary suspect in a $700K wire-fraud incident. FCI identified the breach, proved what had actually happened, and — working with the FBI — recovered the money for the rightful client.
Incident response — common questions
Related
Where incident response fits.
Incident response is one of six firm security capabilities — alongside the FCI Portal, security officer support, security assessment, mass vulnerability response, and breach support.
The controls that make containment possible: managed endpoints with enforcement status visible across every device, and one-click device lockdown through the FCI Portal.
If an incident happened tonight, would your firm be ready by morning?
FCI works with broker-dealers and branch offices, insurance carriers and agencies, and RIAs. Start with a gap analysis — in 30 minutes, you’ll see whether your firm could contain an incident, document it, and prove the rest of the firm was protected.