Cybersecurity Incident Response
Ransomware on your servers. Malware you cannot remove. An email account sending invoices you did not write. Our cybersecurity incident response team stops the bleeding, cleans the environment, and — because we are a licensed investigation agency in Miami — preserves what happened as evidence instead of wiping it away.
Every hour matters in the first day. Call now for triage, containment, and a clear written account of what was taken and how they got in.
In an incident right now? Do these four things first.
These cost nothing, take about a minute, and materially change how much we can recover and how much we can prove. Do them before you call anyone, including us.
What Cybersecurity Incident Response Covers
Most engagements start as one of these and turn into two or three, because incidents rarely stay in their lane — a compromised mailbox is usually how the malware arrived, and the firewall is usually why it spread.
Malware & Virus Removal
Trojans, spyware, cryptominers, browser hijackers and the adware bundles that arrive with them. We identify what is running, what it touched, and what it left behind for next time — persistence is the part most cleanups miss, and it is the reason the same infection returns a fortnight later.
Ransomware Recovery
Containment first, then an honest assessment: which variant, whether a decryptor exists, what your backups actually contain, and what the realistic recovery path is. We will tell you plainly when data is not recoverable rather than billing you to discover it slowly.
Hacked Computer Cleanup
A single machine behaving strangely: unfamiliar programs, a webcam light that comes on by itself, files moving, a mouse that is not yours. We establish whether it is remote access or malware, remove it, and check what was reached from that machine before it was noticed.
Hacked Network Recovery
When it is no longer one machine. We map how far it spread, find the lateral movement path, isolate what is still dirty, and bring systems back in an order that does not simply reinfect the ones you just cleaned.
Email Account Compromise Recovery
The most common incident we see, and the most expensive one to ignore. Attackers sit quietly in a mailbox reading invoice threads, then send a payment-detail change at exactly the right moment. We evict them, find the forwarding rules they left, and reconstruct what they read.
Microsoft 365 Security Remediation
Revoking sessions, removing malicious app consents and inbox rules, resetting the tenant's conditional access and MFA posture, and reading the audit log properly — most of what an attacker did inside a tenant is recorded there and never looked at.
Firewall & Network Security Configuration
The rules that should have stopped this. We review what is exposed to the internet, close what does not need to be open, segment the network so one infected laptop cannot reach the file server, and document the configuration so the next person can maintain it.
Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) Deployment
Antivirus tells you a file was bad. EDR tells you what happened next — which process spawned it, what it contacted, which machines it reached. We deploy it, tune it so the alerts mean something, and show your team how to read them.
Security Audits & Vulnerability Assessments
Before something happens, or after, as part of showing an insurer that it will not happen again. What is exposed, what is unpatched, where credentials are reused, and which of those actually matters for your business — ranked, not a 400-page scanner dump.
24/7 Emergency Cybersecurity Support
Incidents do not wait for Monday, and the first hour matters more than the next twenty. Call 305-686-7826 at any hour. If we are not the right people for what you are facing, we will say so on that call and point you somewhere better.
Our Cybersecurity Incident Response Process
Contain first. Understand second. Rebuild third — in that order, because doing them in any other one destroys the answer to how it happened.
The order matters. Cleaning a machine before you understand how the attacker got in means they walk back through the same door on Tuesday.
Triage
What you are seeing, what is still running, what is already off. We give containment steps on the phone before anyone is dispatched, because the twenty minutes it takes to reach you is twenty minutes the incident keeps spreading.
Contain and Preserve
Isolate what is infected without destroying what it can tell us. Memory and disk images are captured before cleanup starts — this is the step that cannot be done later, and the one most often skipped.
Understand
How they got in, when, what they touched, and whether they are still there. Cleaning before you know the answer is how an environment gets reinfected from a foothold nobody looked for.
Eradicate and Rebuild
Remove the threat, close the way in, restore from backups that have been checked rather than assumed, and bring systems back in a sequence that does not reintroduce what you just removed.
Report and Harden
A written account of what happened and what was done, in language an insurer or an attorney can use. Plus the short list of changes that would have prevented it — ranked by what actually reduces risk, not by what is easiest to sell you.
An IT Company Cleans It Up. We Also Document It.
Plenty of good IT firms can remove malware. Very few of them are thinking about what you will need if this ends up in front of an insurer, a regulator, a judge, or a former employee's attorney — and by the time you need it, the evidence has usually been formatted over.
| What you need | Typical IT response | Miami Private Investigations |
|---|---|---|
| Get the systems working again | Yes — this is what they are good at | Yes |
| Capture evidence before cleanup | Rarely — the priority is uptime, and imaging slows that down | Always, before anything is touched |
| Documented chain of custody | Not typically part of the engagement | Standard practice on every case |
| Find out who did it | Out of scope | Where the evidence supports it — this is investigative work |
| A report an insurer or court will accept | A ticket history and an invoice | Written for that audience from the outset |
| Testify to what was found | Not something most IT firms will do | Available where the case requires it |
To be straight about the boundary: removing malware and rebuilding a network is IT work, and our licence is an investigative licence, not a certification in either. What the licence changes is what happens to the evidence — how it is captured, how custody is recorded, and whether it will still mean anything months later when someone asks you to prove what happened.
Four Kinds of Bad Morning
Small and Mid-Sized Businesses
No internal security team, an IT provider who handles printers and email, and suddenly a server full of encrypted files. Usually the first call is to the IT provider, the second is to us, and the gap between them is where evidence gets lost.
Law Firms and Their Clients
Where the incident is the case rather than an inconvenience: a departing employee who took the client list, a wire fraud that needs tracing, a compromise that has to be documented to a standard that survives cross-examination.
Individuals and Families
A hacked personal email, a stalker with access to a phone or a shared account, a romance scam that turned into remote access to a laptop. Smaller in scale, rarely smaller in consequence, and often the case where safety matters more than data.
Companies Facing an Insurer or Regulator
Where the remediation is done and the question has become what you can prove: when it started, what was accessed, whether notification obligations were triggered, and what you did about it. That answer is built from evidence, and evidence has a shelf life.
Questions People Actually Ask
What is cybersecurity incident response?
Cybersecurity incident response is the work of stopping an attack that is already underway, removing what the attacker left behind, and establishing what actually happened — in that order. It covers the first phone call, containment, forensic capture, eradication, rebuilding, and a written account of the intrusion. The last part is what separates it from ordinary IT cleanup: a repair gets you working again, an incident response also leaves you able to prove what occurred to an insurer, a regulator or a court.
How fast can you actually respond?
Call 305-686-7826 and you get containment guidance on that call, at any hour. On-site response across Miami-Dade and Broward is same-day in most cases. Remote work on cloud accounts and mailboxes often starts within the hour, because nothing has to travel.
Can you decrypt files without paying the ransom?
Sometimes. It depends entirely on the variant — for some, free decryptors exist because the keys leaked or law enforcement seized them; for others the encryption is sound and no amount of effort will break it. We identify the strain first and tell you which situation you are in before you spend money either way.
Should we pay the ransom?
That is a business and legal decision, not a technical one, and it should be made with your attorney and your insurer rather than in the first hour of panic. What we can tell you is what paying is likely to get you, what it will not, and whether your backups make the question unnecessary.
Do you work with our existing IT company?
Usually, yes, and it tends to go well. They know your environment and we do not; we know evidence handling and incident work and they may not. The friction only appears when someone feels blamed, so we are explicit from the start that finding the entry point is not the same as assigning fault.
Is this covered by cyber insurance?
Often, and that is worth checking before you engage anyone. Many policies require you to notify the carrier promptly and some require you to use an approved vendor list. Call your broker early — a delay of a few days can matter more to a claim than anything technical.
Can you tell us who attacked us?
Sometimes, and it depends on what they left behind. Opportunistic ransomware run by an overseas group is often attributable to the group but not to a person you can sue. An insider, a former employee, or someone local is a very different case — that is investigative work, and it is the part we are licensed for.
What does it cost?
It depends on scale and how far it spread, and we will not pretend otherwise with a number on a web page. What we will do is give you a scope and an estimate before work begins, and tell you honestly on the first call if what you are describing is small enough to handle yourself.
We already wiped and reinstalled. Is it too late?
For evidence from that machine, largely yes — which is worth knowing rather than discovering later. But the story usually survives elsewhere: mailbox audit logs, firewall records, cloud sign-in history, and the other machines nobody touched. Call us anyway; there is often more left than people expect.
Tell Us What You Are Seeing
If this is active and spreading, call 305-686-7826 — a phone call gets you containment guidance in the first two minutes. Email or a case request is fine for anything that has already stopped, or for an assessment before something goes wrong.
Reach us directly
The phone is the fastest route during an active incident. Email is fine for assessments and anything already contained.