Digital Forensics, Incident Response and Recovery

Digital Forensics

This branch of cybersecurity focuses on the recovery and investigation of material found in digital devices and cybercrimes. A forensics examiner will attempt to understand the nature and extent of a cyber-attack, as well as try to identify the threat actors.

The most common use of digital forensics is to support or refute a hypothesis in:

• Criminal cases; or
• Civil cases

Digital forensics investigations for gathering, processing, analysing, and extracting data usually consist of four (4) stages:

• Seizure
• Acquisition
• Analysis; and
• Reporting

Note: Auswide Communications can co-ordinate ‘Industry Experts’ in this highly specialised field on request.

Incident Response

The response phase supports the ability to contain the effects of cybersecurity incidents. A formal incident response plan enables cybersecurity teams to limit or prevent damage.

Some of the most common security incidents include:

• Ransomware
• Phishing and social engineering
• Supply chain attacks
• Insider threats; and
• DDoS attacks

By planning ahead and investing in the right tools and resources, your organization will be in a much better position to respond to threats.

You need to act swiftly, and most importantly … be effective!

An incident response plan outlines the procedures that the incident response team needs to follow in the event of an incident. The purpose of the plan is to help teams improve their response and recovery times during the restoration phase of business operations.

The second phase in incident response is to determine whether an incident occurred, its severity, and its type. Next is ‘Containment’, ‘Eradication’ and ‘Recovery’ with the primary objective being to halt the effects of an incident before it can cause further damage.

The final point relates to ‘Post-Incident Activity’. The hacking methods used by cyber criminals and threat actors are continually evolving which is why it’s so important for incident response teams to keep up with the latest tactics.

Your staff play an important role too, which is why they need to be included in a debrief meeting or other post incident activity following a significant incident.

Recovery

The recovery phase of an incident response plan is all about getting your business back up and running as quickly as possible. The Recover Function supports timely recovery to normal operations to reduce the impact of a cybersecurity incident.

After the initial threat has been contained and eradicated, your organizations will need to restore any affected systems and applications to their pre-incident state.

Recovering from a cybersecurity incident can be a daunting undertaking, especially if you’ve lost information that’s critical to running your business. But you can limit the damage to your company and your reputation by developing a solid recovery plan in advance.

Having a detailed recovery plan in place and following it step-by-step will minimize total downtime and ensure a smooth return to normal operations as long as you have backups.

A ransomware attack can destroy your business (and life’s work) in seconds if you don’t, because there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to recover any encrypted files.

Creating a recovery plan is definitely not a set and forget task as new threats continually emerge and the techniques used by cyber-attackers evolve.

Your recovery plan should be reviewed from time to time and tested too!