With the advancement of modern technology, it is an inescapable reality that the global rate of cybercrime is rapidly increasing.
What happens if you find out your company has been hacked or is a victim of cybercrime? Your first thoughts may be focused on resolving the immediate problem, but this is simply the beginning for cybersecurity experts. They perform digital forensics.
In this blog, we will delve into the fundamentals of digital forensics.
What is Digital Forensics?
Digital forensics is the process of discovering, preserving, evaluating, and presenting digital evidence when it is necessary to produce evidence in a court of law.
You can check out our video on digital forensics to learn more:
Need for digital forensics:
With the advancement of technology, a new criminal landscape has evolved. Digital forensics has become a significant instrument used by law enforcement to pursue and prosecute computer-based crimes, such as human exploitation, cyber stalking, and cyber terrorism, and computer-enabled cybercrimes, such as unauthorized data breaches that result in information theft.
Criminal behavior, data theft, or unauthorized access can affect any element of an organizational system. Digital forensics can help guarantee that best practices are followed during the evidence collection process. Without the use of digital forensics, there is a risk that evidence may be overlooked or contaminated, thereby compromising the integrity of the investigation. As hackers become more clever and data breaches become more costly to businesses, digital forensics will continue to be a valuable tool for prosecuting criminals.
Process of Digital Forensics:
The process is broken down into several parts, including data collection to review and analysis to reporting to raise the chances of any evidence discovered being entirely accepted in a court of law.
Data collection: Investigators get search authority, document the chain of custody, and hash and duplicate all evidence during the data collecting phase.
Examination and analysis: Investigators validate their tools, conduct analyses, and replicate those procedures and outcomes for assurance during the examination and analysis phase.
Reporting: Conclusions are reached during the reporting phase, and expert evidence or testimony is submitted, as investigators may be obliged to do so as part of expert testimony.
Types of Digital Forensics:
Every device and network can be used in a cyberattack or become a victim of one, and these have distinct intrusion tactics and evidence handling requirements; hence there are numerous branches of digital forensics.
Computer forensics: It might be based on the necessity to produce a disc image to preserve evidence, or it could be based on the usage of virtual drives to imitate a complete machine.
Mobile device forensics: It focuses on forensically sound approaches for recovering digital evidence from mobile devices.
Network forensics: It focuses on computer network traffic monitoring and analysis.
Tools used in Digital Forensics:
There are various specialized tools, such as:
Wireshark
Bulk Extractor
Autopsy
Computer-Aided Investigative Environment (CAINE)
DumpZilla
FTK Imager
SIFT Workstation
Advantages of Digital Forensics:
Gathers significant evidence
Safeguards and preserves the system's integrity
Secures data
Good for recovering data
Challenges faced by Digital Forensics:
Evidence mishandling by untrained personnel
Requires extensive knowledge
Demonstrating the evidence's reliability
Final words:
Regardless of where an attack occurs, the business’s cybersecurity program should have policies that cover all aspects of digital forensics, including alerting law enforcement, monitoring, and conducting frequent evaluations of forensic policies, guidelines, and processes. You can join InfosecTrain's SOC Analyst or SOC Expert combo training course to learn more about digital forensics.
