An organization's security operations center (SOC) detects unusual outbound traffic from a critical application server. Analysts confirm that an attacker exploited an unpatched deserialization flaw to upload a web shell and create a backdoor account. As part of containment, the team isolated the server from the network, terminated the malicious processes, and applied the vendor's security patch that corrects the deserialization flaw. Incident logs indicate no further exploit attempts after the patch. According to standard incident-response remediation procedures, which action should the team take next to ensure the environment is fully remediated before moving into the recovery phase?
Enable heightened network monitoring to detect any new compromise attempts.
Restore the server to production and resume normal business services.
Re-evaluate the affected server and related assets to confirm no malicious artifacts remain.
Escalate the incident report to senior management for post-mortem review.
After patching the exploited vulnerability, the team must verify that the threat has been fully eradicated. This involves rescanning the server, reviewing logs, and checking for residual malware, rogue accounts, or persistence mechanisms. Skipping this validation step and jumping directly to service restoration, reporting, or routine monitoring risks leaving dormant artifacts that could re-activate the compromise. Only once the re-evaluation confirms a clean state should the organization progress to the recovery phase, where normal operations are restored.
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What is a deserialization flaw, and why is it a security concern?
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What are malicious artifacts, and how do security teams identify them?
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Why is re-evaluation necessary before moving to the recovery phase?