When a critical 0-day exploit was discovered in the wild, I assumed full incident command responsibility. Within 48 hours, we achieved containment, deployed interim and permanent patches, verified system integrity, and restored operational confidence — all without data loss or customer disruption.
A high-severity vulnerability (CVE) was publicly disclosed, with live exploitation confirmed against widely deployed services. Reconnaissance probes were detected targeting exposed workloads within hours. No vendor patch existed at the time of discovery — rapid self-led mitigation was essential.
Threats spanned multiple layers: perimeter, application, identity. Response required cross-functional coordination across regions and providers. Visibility gaps and tooling inconsistencies made real-time risk assessment difficult.
- Formed a round-the-clock incident response team across engineering, security, and ops.
- Locked down ingress points via firewall rules, access policies, and identity restrictions.
- Deployed manual WAF protections ahead of vendor updates.
- Audited logs, API traffic, and privilege use for signs of compromise.
- Applied vendor patches within hours of release, with full integration testing.
- Ran hot-wash simulations and internal comms to maintain calm transparency.
- Updated threat models and automated detection patterns to catch variants.
- Debriefed stakeholders and issued post-incident analysis with improvement actions.
Containment was achieved within 6 hours of initial signal. No production downtime or breach occurred. Remediation was completed inside a 48-hour critical window. Post-mortem drills improved incident readiness by over 50%.
0-day events are as much about composure as they are about code. Systems don’t save themselves — people do. The real test wasn’t patching a vulnerability — it was proving that the team, the protocols, and the leadership were already built to handle it.