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

Evidence collection

In order to conduct a proper examination of log files and other network data such as packet captures, they often have to be moved from the log source and examined offline. As with any source of evidence, log files or packet captures have to be handled with due care to ensure that they are not corrupted or modified during the transfer. One simple solution is to transfer the evidence immediately to a USB drive or similar removable medium. From there, a hash can be created for the evidence prior to any examination.

The acquisition of network evidence such as a packet capture or a log file should be thoroughly documented. Incident response personnel may be acquiring log files and packet captures from several sources over the entire network. As a result, they should ensure that they can trace back every separate piece of evidence to its source, as well as the date and time that the evidence was collected. This can be recorded on a network evidence log sheet and entries...