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Lesson 05 of 05 · published

After the Incident — Post-Mortem and Hardening

~15 min · post-mortem, hardening, runbook

Level 0Greenhorn
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The incident isn't over when the dust settles. The half-day after is when you turn this experience into permanent improvement.

The three questions

  1. What did the attacker actually access? (audit log, session table archive, app-level activity log)
  2. What would have happened if I'd done nothing? (which credentials/data would have been exposed)
  3. What should change so this is harder/less harmful next time? (the actual hardening)

What to capture while the memory is fresh

ArtifactWhyHow
Snapshot of security_sessions at incident timeForensic record of what was activecp security.db security.db.incident-2026-04-15
App access log for the suspect windowWhat URLs were hit, whenuvicorn / nginx access logs
Tailscale device logWhen the device was active in the meshTailscale admin → Logs
Find My location historyWhere the device was during the windowiCloud / Google account
Your own timeline"I noticed missing at 14:32, clicked revoke at 14:34..."Notes app while it's fresh

The hardening backlog

For each thing that could have been worse, file a small change:

  • "PIN was 4 digits and shoulder-surfable" → 5 or 6 digits.
  • "I noticed too late because no email alert" → add a webhook on Tailscale device-connect from new IPs.
  • "Killswitch took 90 seconds to find" → bookmark folder + browser-extension shortcut.
  • "Tailscale key was 180 days" → drop to 30 days; accept the re-auth friction.
  • "Couldn't reach admin from my tablet" → install Tailscale on tablet; test the path.

External links

Exercise

Write a personal incident response runbook in Markdown — your customized version of the 10-minute playbook plus the post-mortem questions. Store it in 1Password (NOT the repo, because the repo could be the thing compromised). Schedule a quarterly drill in your calendar. The runbook becomes the institutional memory you don't have because you're solo.

Progress

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