Which of the following is MOST important to complete during the recovery phase of an incident response process before bringing affected systems back online?

Before restoring affected systems, thorough testing and verification are essential to ensure that all malware, backdoors, and rootkits have been completely removed and the vulnerability exploited has been remediated. This step is critical to prevent the immediate re-compromise of systems and ensures the integrity and security of the environment post-incident.

Documenting recovery steps is important for reporting and process improvement, but it does not directly secure the systems before they are brought back online.

Recording and closing security incident tickets is an administrative step indicating completion, not a technical action to secure systems.

Capturing forensic images is part of the containment and eradication phases for evidence preservation, typically done before or during eradication, not primarily during the recovery phase to bring systems back online.