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

Compute Engine logs

GCE is a service offered by GCP that allows users to create VMs within GCP’s infrastructure. These VMs can be hosted across any part of the world where GCP operates. It provides flexibility and scalability options, making various preconfigured VM instances available. It can create on demand or resize a VM based on requirements. Users can create a VM instance or a group of VMs through GCE Instance Group Manager, which manages the deployment and configuration of VMs.

GCP’s logging platform

GCP’s Cloud Logging platform automatically collects and aggregates logs from various GCP resources via Logs Explorer. It offers a single-pane view of all the logs and filters, allowing investigators to hunt for specific alerts or threats and use them for monitoring. Some of the types of logs it collects are as follows:

  • Platform logs: Generated through GCP’s services, these logs are used for debugging and troubleshooting. Examples of platform...