If you need to quickly determine if users were impacted by a phishing attack, what should you analyze?

To quickly determine if users were impacted by a phishing attack, analyzing the message traces of the emails sent to users is essential. Message traces provide detailed information about the emails that were sent, including sender and recipient addresses, timestamps, and the status of the emails (whether they were delivered, bounced, or marked as phishing). This allows for the identification of suspicious emails that may have been sent to users, thereby highlighting potential threats and facilitating a quicker response to mitigate any harm.

By examining these traces, security analysts can pinpoint which users interacted with the phishing emails, track the potential compromise of credentials, and understand the scope of the attack. This information is crucial for assessing the impact of the attack and taking necessary actions to protect the affected users and systems.

In contrast, analyzing firewall logs for suspicious IP addresses could provide insights into unauthorized access attempts, but it may not directly correlate with the specific users impacted by the phishing emails. Reviewing the incident response timeline for previous attacks may help in understanding past incidents but doesn't address current threats. Lastly, the encryption status of email attachments pertains more to data security rather than directly identifying the phishing event and its impacts on users. Therefore, message traces emerge as the most relevant analysis in this scenario.