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

Azure Virtual Machines log analysis

We discussed Azure Virtual Machines in Chapter 3. In Azure, VMs are widely used to deploy and run various applications and services. To ensure the security and stability of these VMs, incident responders and administrators must analyze the logs generated by the VMs. These logs provide valuable insights into the system’s activities, performance, security incidents, and potential vulnerabilities. In this section, we will explore the different log sources within Azure that incident responders can analyze for effective VM log analysis.

  • Azure Log Analytics: Azure Log Analytics is a powerful tool that centralizes log data from various sources, including Azure VMs. It provides a comprehensive log management solution and offers advanced querying and visualization capabilities. By integrating Azure VMs with Log Analytics, incident responders can collect and analyze logs from multiple VMs in a unified manner. The logs that are collected can...