On their way back to Schattenburg, Rothütle and YAML Voorhees move cautiously through the dense forest. Then, suddenly, a shadow is on the path ahead, with eyes glowing in the dim light.
"Give me the light," Rothütle says to YAML, taking his lantern. "Now you can draw your sword."
"But I don't have a sword," YAML replies, confused.
"What? Then how are you going to fight the CVE? With your charm?" Rothütle snaps.
"CVE?" YAML asks.
Rothütle starts looking for something sharp in his pocket, finding only a pen. He grips it tightly, and steps forward.
Whispering to himself, "You can apply for the most useless Guardian of the year award later."
From the shadows, a figure steps forward. It tries to take the lantern from Rothütle, but he stabs the pen into its arm. The figure recoils, and returns to the shadows.
"Let's move," Rothütle says, breathing heavily. Then he sees a CVE grabbing YAML from behind.
He rushes to help, but as he approaches, YAML hits the ground, blowing the lantern out.
"Let's fall back to Gord," YAML gasps, struggling to get up. "She can help us."
Then a bright silhouette appears in the darkness. Gord steps forward, sword drawn, wearing a white cloak.
As she approaches, the CVE dissolves into mist.
"Good to see you, Gord," Rothütle says, relieved. "Nice cloak!"
Gord smiles faintly, pulling off the white cloak and giving it to Rothütle.
"Here, it keeps the CVEs away."
Tip of the day: When under attack, fall back, regroup, and restore stability.
Security Tip #20 — Incident Response: Fallback, Regroup, Restore
When an attack is active, forward motion is the fastest way to make things worse.
Rothütle and YAML don't win by fighting harder.
They survive by falling back to a position where protection still exists.
This is how real incident response works.
1. Fallback — Stop the Bleeding
- Isolate affected systems.
- Cut network access if needed.
- Disable compromised credentials or workloads.
- Accept partial downtime to prevent full compromise.
If visibility is gone, assume the attacker still has access.
2. Regroup — Re-establish Control
- Restore logging and monitoring.
- Verify which systems are still trustworthy.
- Identify blast radius before touching production.
- Communicate clearly: who owns decisions, who investigates.
Chaos kills response effectiveness faster than attackers do.
3. Restore — Rebuild from Known-Good State
- Rebuild systems from clean images.
- Redeploy from verified pipelines.
- Rotate secrets after containment.
- Bring services back gradually, validating at each step.
Never "clean" a compromised system. Replace it.
The Core Lesson
Incidents are not won by heroics.
They are survived by discipline, retreat, and controlled recovery.
Fall back.
Regroup.
Restore stability.
Everything else is noise.
📘 Learn Docker and Kubernetes Security
To learn how legacy systems impact modern container security — and how to modernize safely — check out my book Docker and Kubernetes Security, currently 40% off.
🔗 buy.DockerSecurity.io
💬 Code: BLACKFOREST25
👉 To have the story delivered to your inbox every day in December, subscribe to my Medium publications.
Top comments (0)