Book Image

Digital Forensics and Incident Response - Second Edition

By : Gerard Johansen
Book Image

Digital Forensics and Incident Response - Second Edition

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 second edition will help you perform cutting-edge digital forensic activities and incident response. After focusing on the fundamentals of incident response that are critical to any information security team, you’ll move on to exploring the incident response framework. From understanding its importance to creating a swift and effective response to security incidents, the book will guide you with the help of useful examples. You’ll later get up to speed with digital forensic techniques, from acquiring evidence and examining volatile memory through to hard drive examination and network-based evidence. 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 have learned how to efficiently investigate and report unwanted security breaches and incidents in your organization.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Section 1: Foundations of Incident Response and Digital Forensics
5
Section 2: Evidence Acquisition
9
Section 3: Analyzing Evidence
15
Section 4: Specialist Topics
Appendix

Analyzing NetFlow

NetFlow is a feature that was first introduced by Cisco Systems in the 1990s. NetFlow collects specific data about packets as they enter or exit an interface of a router or switch. This data is then sent to a NetFlow Collector via a NetFlow Exporter, which is often made part of switches or routers. The NetFlow Collector then aggregates and stores the flow data for analysis. This data is often leveraged by network and systems administrators to troubleshoot bandwidth issues, identify network congestion, and to observe the flow of data.

A sample NetFlow output is included next. What is included with flow data can vary from network device manufacturers as there are several versions in the commercial market. The following screenshot shows some of the basic information that is captured as part of a NetFlow dataset:

The following components of a NetFlow record are...