The Importance of Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR)
DFIR is a vital part of an organization’s strategy for managing security incidents. When a company suffers a cyberattack, it’s important that the organization restores normal operations as quickly as possible with minimal loss of productivity, data, etc. However, it’s also vital to preserve evidence from the attack that can be provided to law enforcement or used in legal proceedings. DFIR accomplishes both these goals, addressing all of an organization’s priorities in the wake of a data breach or other security incident.
Components of Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR)
DFIR is made up of two main components:
- Digital Forensics: Digital forensics is a term used to describe the collection and analysis of electronically stored information so that it can be relied on as evidence or to support a finding of fact. Copies of evidence collected using accepted methods or performed by experienced and competent analysts can be relied on in subsequent analysis and when being presented at a time after the event. Analysis of data from ‘forensic level’ data captures can reveal artifacts that a review of logs of the existing content on a computer system may not. The forensic analysis seeks to recover all available information including recently deleted information and artifacts that can be used to piece together a sequence of events that may otherwise have been missed.
- Incident Response: Incident response involves investigating and remediating a cyberattack to restore corporate systems back to normal operations. During an ‘incident response’ the crime scene is live so digital evidence collection methods need to adapt to the scenario to ensure that the evidence collection and investigation are balanced and matched to any legal and regulatory obligations and the need to return to secure operations.
The two components of DFIR play complementary roles within the business. One provides insight into an attack — for both short-term and long-term use — while the other works to erase the effects of a security incident on the business.
Benefits of DFIR
DFIR can provide various benefits to the enterprise, including:
- Deeper Insight into Security Incidents: DFIR involves in-depth investigations into security incidents. This provides the organization with a greater understanding of what happened, how to fix it, and methods to prevent it in the future.
- Minimizing Damage: With a greater understanding of a security incident, an incident response team can more effectively mitigate it. Rapid, correct incident response reduces the cost and impact of a cyberattack on the business.
- Regulatory Compliance: Many regulations mandate that an organization perform in-depth analysis and reporting of cyberattacks. DFIR helps them to accomplish this.
- Improved Security: DFIR provides valuable insights that can help to prevent similar cyberattacks in the future. This improves the organization’s overall security posture.
Challenges of DFIR
However, DFIR also faces significant challenges, such as:
- Evolving Threats: The cyber threat landscape is constantly evolving, and DFIR teams may face cyber threats that they’ve never seen before. Keeping up with the latest cyberattack campaigns is a significant challenge for DFIR.
- Preserving Evidence: To be useful to the company, evidence must be carefully collected and available when needed. Collecting forensic evidence without degrading it is challenging, and the sheer volume of potentially relevant data may make data storage a challenge.
- Maintaining Compliance: Various regulations have their own rules about how companies should investigate and report cyberattacks. Maintaining compliance with a diverse set of laws — each with its own requirements — can pose a significant challenge for a DFIR team.
- Map Evidence Sources and Consider Collection Plans: Organizations should map their evidence sources ahead of time, and consider issues such as what is logged, how long are the logs kept for, how long it takes to search for and produce them, and how to carry out a forensic data collection or forensic image from key systems suspected of or that were involved in a compromise. Being prepared and practiced will help to speed up collection, analysis, and resolution time.
DFIR Best Practices
Some best practices to maximize the impact of DFIR include:
- Prepare for Incidents: Companies will experience cyberattacks, and having the right tools, teams, and processes in place enhances DFIR. Organizations should invest in necessary tools and provide training to team members on corporate policy and best practices.
- Protect the Integrity of Evidence: Evidence collected during incident response may be used later in legal proceedings. Evidence should be collected and stored in a way that preserves its integrity and usability, and the chain of custody should be maintained at all times.
- Communicate and Collaborate: The cyber threat landscape is constantly evolving, and new DFIR tools and techniques emerge regularly. Communicating about threats, tools, and best practices ensures that the DFIR team is prepared to manage potential security incidents.
- Test Incident Response Strategies: An organization should have plans in place for managing different types of incidents. It should also perform regular tests of these plans to verify that they are effective and apply potential enhancements before an incident occurs.
Digital Forensics and Incident Response with Check Point
Digital Forensics and Incident Response are vital to an organization’s ability to recover from a cyberattack; however, effective DFIR requires specialized tools and expertise. Check Point offers DFIR services that can provide companies with access to the tools and skills that they need.
For more information about the insights that Check Point can provide, check out this sample Root Cause Analysis and Compromise Assessment Report. For help with managing an ongoing incident, reach out to our experts.
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