Book Image

Digital Forensics and Incident Response - Third Edition

By : Gerard Johansen
5 (1)
Book Image

Digital Forensics and Incident Response - Third Edition

5 (1)
By: Gerard Johansen

Overview of this book

An understanding of how digital forensics integrates with the overall response to cybersecurity incidents is key to securing your organization’s infrastructure from attacks. This updated third edition will help you perform cutting-edge digital forensic activities and incident response with a new focus on responding to ransomware attacks. After covering the fundamentals of incident response that are critical to any information security team, you’ll explore incident response frameworks. From understanding their importance to creating a swift and effective response to security incidents, the book will guide you using examples. Later, you’ll cover digital forensic techniques, from acquiring evidence and examining volatile memory through to hard drive examination and network-based evidence. You’ll be able to apply these techniques to the current threat of ransomware. As you progress, you’ll discover the role that threat intelligence plays in the incident response process. You’ll also learn how to prepare an incident response report that documents the findings of your analysis. Finally, in addition to various incident response activities, the book will address malware analysis and demonstrate how you can proactively use your digital forensic skills in threat hunting. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to investigate and report unwanted security breaches and incidents in your organization.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
1
Part 1: Foundations of Incident Response and Digital Forensics
6
Part 2: Evidence Acquisition
11
Part 3: Evidence Analysis
17
Part 4: Ransomware Incident Response
20
Part 5: Threat Intelligence and Hunting
Appendix

Summary

Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” In many ways, this sentiment is quite accurate when it comes to organizations and the threat of cyber attacks. Preparing for a cyber attack is a critical function that must be taken as seriously as any other aspect of cybersecurity. Having a solid understanding of the IR process to build on this with an IR capability can provide organizations with a measure of preparation so that in the event of an incident, they can respond. Keep in mind as we move forward that forensic techniques, TI, and reverse engineering are there to assist an organization to get to the end—that is, back up and running.

This chapter explored some of the preparation that goes into building an IR capability. Selecting a team, creating a plan, and building playbooks and escalation procedures allow a CSIRT to effectively address an incident. The CSIRT and associated plans give structure to the digital forensic techniques to be discussed.

This discussion begins with the next chapter, where proper evidence handling and documentation is the critical first step in investigating an incident.