What best describes the primary goal of incident response?

The primary goal of incident response is to quickly and effectively contain and mitigate incidents. This involves organizing a strategic approach to detect, respond to, and recover from security incidents, thereby limiting the damage caused and reducing the recovery time and costs. An effective incident response ensures that the impacts of an incident are minimized, aiding in the protection of sensitive data, maintaining the integrity of systems, and ensuring operational continuity.

When an incident occurs, the response team must assess the situation rapidly, contain the threat to prevent further harm, and work on remediation efforts to restore normal operations. This proactive approach helps organizations not only deal with current incidents but also refine their security posture to better prepare for future threats. While developing software tools, enhancing customer satisfaction, and improving marketing strategies are important objectives in their respective domains, they do not lie at the core of incident response, which centers on threat containment and mitigation.