Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) is a cybersecurity discipline that focuses on identifying, investigating, and remediating security incidents. It relies on distinct skills, tools, and workflows and requires specialist
Let’s break the concept down into its two main components:
- Digital forensics is the process of investigating information systems to find evidence of a security breach. It generates insight into the scope of the attack, who is behind it, and why.
- Incident response describes the specific actions an organization takes after a security incident is detected. It includes playbooks designed to minimize the risks associated with different types of attacks.
Since these processes are complementary to one another, security leaders often group them into a single unit. Let’s take a closer look at the steps included in each one.
Digital Forensics Explained
The typical steps in the digital forensics process include:
- Identifying security incidents. Assess the scope of a security incident and determine the level of risk it poses to the organization.
- Preserving and documenting evidence. Collect attack data and categorize it to make investigation easier. Preserve relevant evidence according to regulatory and legal requirements.
- Forensic data analysis. Review the collected evidence to better understand the scope of the attack and draw conclusions about the security breach and its impact.
- Reporting conclusions. Communicate the investigation’s findings to the relevant stakeholders in a clear, actionable, and transparent way.
Incident Response Explained
To better understand incident response, let’s look at the six steps of the SANS Incident Response Framework
- Preparation. Create security wide policies, perform risk assessments, and understand the organization’s risk profile.
- Identification. Monitor the network for unusual behavior and investigate events that suggest a potential security breach.
- Containment. Take decisive action to protect the network from potential threats. Minimize risk first, then focus on long-term tasks like rebuilding impacted systems.
- Eradication. Remove malware from impacted systems, analyze the attack, and replace compromised systems that can no longer be trusted.
- Recovery. Bring production systems back online while carefully mitigating the risk of new cyberattacks. Test recovered systems to make sure they function as expected.
- Lessons Learned. Create a report detailing the security incident and its impact on the organization. Identify opportunities to improve security against future attacks.
DFIR Enhances Security Event Investigations
Modern organizations are shifting workloads between on-premises and cloud environments, hiring remote employees across the globe, and constantly expanding their attack surface. All these factors heighten the need for high-quality security investigations that enable leaders to manage risk effectively.
Security teams with successful DFIR processes conduct quick, thorough investigations into security incidents. This provides the organization with valuable information about the event in near real-time.
Some of the questions that good investigations answer include:
- Who is responsible for the incident?
- What is the full impact of the incident?
- How did the threat actor gain access?
- Which security policies did attackers bypass, and how?
- How do we prevent this attack from happening again?
- How do we remediate the issue and restore trust?
Answering these questions can provide valuable insight into active threats and help organizations optimize their response. The more you know about security incidents as they happen, the better-prepared you are to defend against them.
4 Challenges to Effective DFIR Investigations
While the benefits of combining digital forensics and incident response are clear, not all organizations extract optimal value from the process. Some of the challenges that prevent security teams from conducting thorough investigations include:
- Complex IT infrastructure scatters evidence across multiple environments. Reconstructing digital evidence from a single host is relatively simple. Doing it across multiple on-premises and cloud-native environments is much more time-consuming.
- The fast pace of emerging technology adoption. New devices, applications, and assets come with unique security risks. Investigators can’t always keep up with these new developments in time.
- False positives and alert fatigue. Security teams face increasing volumes of security alerts, but can’t filter the data to prioritize high-severity activities effectively. This introduces a great deal of noise to the investigative process.>
- Larger attack surfaces. Modern organizations have larger attack surfaces than ever before. Many IT leaders aren’t certain what vulnerabilities they actually have, which makes investigations much harder to conduct.
How to Choose the Right DFIR Solution
Most Security Operations Centers (SOCs) offer digital forensics and incident response capabilities. Investing in high quality DFIR technologies allows the security team to accelerate incident response investigations and conduct proactive threat hunting.
Here are some things to keep in mind when selecting a DFIR solution for your organization:
- Choose between proactive and reactive use cases. Some DFIR tools focus more on proactive use cases, like threat hunting, security training, and vulnerability testing. Others focus on addressing security breaches and providing real-time investigation support.
- Prioritize advanced forensic capabilities. The core purpose of DFIR is gaining a comprehensive understanding of security incidents while preserving the relevant evidence. Your DFIR tool should make it easy to capture, store, and analyze this evidence, and be able to recover data from compromised systems.
- Keep on-site support in mind. DFIR technologies often require on-site support. Your organization should prioritize tools from reputable vendors present in their local market, or rely on experienced managed security service providers who can provide that support.
- Choose an accessible pricing structure. Some DFIR services charge customers based on coverage and ownership. Others offer prepaid, subscription-based pricing models. The best choice for you will depend on your organization’s size, budget, and security risk profile.
Benefits of Deploying Best-in-Class DFIR Technology
Deploying industry-leading DFIR technology allows organizations to bridge the gap between detection and response. Comprehensive investigation tools and deep automation allows security teams to improve operational security in four key ways:
- Lower dwell times. Most organizations take months to contain data breaches. High quality DFIR solutions help reduce dwell time to a fraction of the industry average.
- Fewer recurring incidents. Comprehensive end-to-end investigation capabilities prevent organizations from facing the same cyberattacks over and over again.
- Faster investigations. Instead of spending weeks investigating and resolving security threats, DFIR technology can provide real-time insight.
- Reduced burnout risk. SOC analyst burnout can have a serious impact on your organization’s overall security posture. Automated DFIR-enhanced investigations reduce that risk and allow analysts to do more of what they do best.
Make Novawatch Your DFIR Partner
Novawatch provides its customers with enhanced incident response capabilities through its comprehensive MXDR security package. In partnership with Binalyze, we accelerate incident response with automated digital forensics and proactive risk assessment. Instead of drawing resources from your existing security team, let our highly experienced product experts conduct fast, decisive incident response tasks for you.
Deploy a scalable solution for handling forensic investigations into security events as they occur so that your IT team can remain focused on high-impact strategic tasks. Don’t let security incidents distract your team from achieving its goals. Talk to a Novawatch MXDR specialist to find out more.
