An employee receives an email from a “trusted” person containing a hyperlink that is malvertising.

Theroot cause analysisin incident response focuses on identifying theinitial trigger or root causeof the incident to understand how it started and how to prevent recurrence. In this scenario, thephishing email sent to the victim(A) is the initial trigger that led to the employee’s action of clicking the malvertising link, resulting in the malware download.

The other options represent later stages in the incident response cycle, such as detection (SIEM alert, cybersecurity team’s alert) or supporting evidence (email header information), but they do not address the root cause, which is thephishing email itself.

This aligns with theCyberOps Technologies (CBRFIR) 300-215 study guide, which states that identifying theinitial vector of compromiseis critical to theroot cause analysisphase of incident response (Chapter: Incident Response Techniques, page 410-412).