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Domain 2 — Incident Response (14%)

Prepare for security incidents, investigate events, contain threats, automate remediation, and recover workloads securely.


1. Incident Preparation

Core Services: - AWS Systems Manager - AWS Shield Advanced - AWS Organizations - AWS Resilience Hub - AWS Fault Injection Service

Know: - Runbooks - OpsCenter - Blast radius reduction - Delegated administration - Chaos testing - IR readiness


2. Detection → Investigation

Core Services: - Amazon GuardDuty - AWS Security Hub - Amazon Security Lake - Amazon Detective - AWS CloudTrail - AWS CloudTrail Lake

Know: - Findings validation - Timeline analysis - Scope determination - Root cause analysis - Event correlation


3. Evidence Collection & Forensics

Core Services: - Automated Forensics Orchestrator for Amazon EC2 - AWS Systems Manager - Amazon S3 - AWS CloudTrail - Amazon Security Lake

Know: - Snapshot acquisition - Log preservation - Chain of custody - Immutable evidence - Artifact storage


4. Automated Remediation

Core Services: - AWS Lambda - AWS Step Functions - AWS Systems Manager - Amazon Application Recovery Controller

Know: - Event-driven response - Isolation workflows - Auto remediation - Recovery orchestration


5. Containment & Recovery

Core Services: - AWS Backup - AWS WAF - AWS Network Firewall - Security Groups - AWS Site-to-Site VPN

Know: - Quarantine - Block malicious traffic - Restore workloads - Rollback - Network isolation


Incident Response Lifecycle

Preparation → Detection → Investigation → Containment → Eradication → Recovery → Lessons Learned


Most Important Comparisons

If question says Service
Threat detected GuardDuty
Aggregate findings Security Hub
Investigate root cause Detective
Collect evidence Forensics Orchestrator
Automate remediation Step Functions
Execute operational actions Systems Manager
Restore workloads Backup
Test response plans Fault Injection Service
Validate resilience Resilience Hub

Exam Scenarios

EC2 Compromise

GuardDuty → Security Hub → Detective → Snapshot → Isolate SG → Lambda → Restore Backup


DDoS Attack

Shield Advanced → WAF → CloudFront → Security Hub


Credential Exposure

CloudTrail → Detective → Disable IAM Access → Rotate Secrets


Exam Weight

14%