Which activity is essential after a security incident has occurred to restore operations?

The essential activity after a security incident has occurred to restore operations is response and recovery. This phase is critical as it involves systematic actions taken to mitigate the impact of the incident and to initiate the process of restoring services and operations to their normal state.

During the response phase, organizations focus on containing the incident to prevent further damage, analyzing the situation to understand the extent of the breach, and implementing immediate fixes to safeguard the environment. Following this, recovery efforts are aimed at restoring any affected systems and data, ensuring that everything is functioning correctly, and verifying that the threat has been neutralized.

Effective response and recovery efforts are vital to minimizing downtime and restoring business operations promptly. Additionally, this phase can provide valuable lessons learned, which can enhance future incident response strategies and improve overall organizational resilience.

Other activities such as obstacles and prevention, surveillance and notification, and asset management, do play roles in overall security management but are not directly focused on immediate recovery from a security incident. Prevention strategies are more proactive, aiming to avert incidents before they occur, while asset management is focused on tracking and securing organizational resources rather than reacting to incidents. Surveillance and notification involve monitoring systems and alerting stakeholders but do not address restoring operations directly after an incident.