Book Image

Cloud Forensics Demystified

By : Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Mansoor Haqanee
Book Image

Cloud Forensics Demystified

By: Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Mansoor Haqanee

Overview of this book

As organizations embrace cloud-centric environments, it becomes imperative for security professionals to master the skills of effective cloud investigation. Cloud Forensics Demystified addresses this pressing need, explaining how to use cloud-native tools and logs together with traditional digital forensic techniques for a thorough cloud investigation. The book begins by giving you an overview of cloud services, followed by a detailed exploration of the tools and techniques used to investigate popular cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Progressing through the chapters, you’ll learn how to investigate Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and containerized environments such as Kubernetes. Throughout, the chapters emphasize the significance of the cloud, explaining which tools and logs need to be enabled for investigative purposes and demonstrating how to integrate them with traditional digital forensic tools and techniques to respond to cloud security incidents. By the end of this book, you’ll be well-equipped to handle security breaches in cloud-based environments and have a comprehensive understanding of the essential cloud-based logs vital to your investigations. This knowledge will enable you to swiftly acquire and scrutinize artifacts of interest in cloud security incidents.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1: Cloud Fundamentals
6
Part 2: Forensic Readiness: Tools, Techniques, and Preparation for Cloud Forensics
10
Part 3: Cloud Forensic Analysis – Responding to an Incident in the Cloud

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

GCP is a suite of cloud computing services provided by Google. Similar to both AWS and Azure, GCP provides organizations with a wide range of cloud services that can be used to build, deploy, and manage applications and services.

Google Compute Engine (GCE)

Google Compute Engine (GCE) is a cloud computing service offered by GCP that provides organizations with virtual machine instances on demand. With GCE, organizations can launch virtual machine instances quickly and easily, configure them to their specifications, and scale them up or down as needed. The following screenshot shows GCE’s dashboard, where you can create virtual machine instances. All created virtual machine instances will appear on this page.

Figure 3.8 – GCE dashboard

Figure 3.8 – GCE dashboard

GCE supports a range of operating systems, including Linux and Windows, and provides organizations with a range of machine types optimized for different workloads. Similar to...