Extended Detection and Response (XDR) has generated a lot of buzz recently with press, analysts, and even customers. There’s no denying that, at face value, its promise of reduced complexity and cost while increasing detection and response is alluring. As security teams look to modernize their security tooling, they’re also looking for solutions to some of their largest challenges. Is XDR the answer? What is XDR, exactly, and how do you determine if it’s right for your organization?

In my past experience as an SRE I’ve learned some valuable lessons about how to respond and learn from incidents. Declare and run retros for the small incidents. It's less stressful, and action items become much more actionable. Decrease the time it takes to analyze an incident. You'll remember more, and will learn more from the incident. Alert on pain felt by people — not computers. The only reason we declare incidents at all is because of the people on the other side of them.

Software is eating the world. Digital Transformation is top of mind for companies looking to meet ever-growing consumer demands and digitize manual processes. This isn’t unique to the technology industry. Ecommerce, finance, healthcare, and other industries are all moving in this direction.

Major-incident war rooms are synonymous with stress. Pressure from executives, digging for a needle in a haystack, too much noise—it’s all weight on your hardworking technical teams. Incident responders clearly need a more effective way to collaborate across various technical teams. A method that both minimizes interruptions and keeps stakeholders up to date while ensuring everyone has the right level of context to do their job.

Subscribe to Work Life Get stories about tech and teams in your inbox Subscribe When one of your IT services is on fire there’s no time to waste. Especially if that fire is blocking your users from getting stuff done. Rapid resolution tends to eclipse all else during an incident, often causing your team to ignore or forget pieces of the incident response process – like keeping people in the loop.

Onboarding a new tool can be boring. Or stressful. Or both. When onboarding an incident response tool, it can be difficult to make sure that your team is getting the most from the experience. Do you opt for a run-of-the-mill meeting, or try to learn while in an incident? Neither option is ideal. That’s why Petal’s DevOps Engineer Michael Cole found a new way to get his team using Blameless for their incident response process.

A few minutes of unexpected downtime can have catastrophic effects! Having a great incident response plan is more than a luxury - it is a necessity for organisations of all sizes today. This blog outlines key activities that can help you in formulating a better incidence plan.

You have identified a data breach, now what? Your Incident Response Playbook is up to date. You have drilled for this, you know who the key players on your team are and you have their home phone numbers, mobile phone numbers, and email addresses, so you get to work. It is seven o’clock in the evening so you are sure everyone is available and ready to respond, you begin typing “that” email and making phone calls, one at a time.