Cyber forensics is rapidly becoming one of the most reliable ways of investigating cybercrimes through legal proceedings. In today's world, every single transaction and connection is based on mobile phone devices or computers. Therefore, cyber forensics can be used for detecting privacy breaches and other crimes. The popular electronic discovery technique can be used for revealing and determining criminal evidence. The legal investigation process often involves electronic data storage extraction. While the cyber forensic technique is still very much in its initial stage, it is gaining popularity as a viable way of interpreting evidence.
Why Cyber Forensics?
Cybercrimes are expanding at a broad spectrum. From downloading copyrighted works for unauthorized distribution to email scams, the reason behind these cybercrimes is promoted by the willingness of earning profits from the private information or a third-party's intellectual property.
The goal of cyber forensics is to carry out a structured investigation while following a set of procedures and documenting all the available evidence to come to a conclusion regarding a cybersecurity breach. The procedure can find out the details based on the involved technical devices, people, and their specific goals. The professional cyber forensic professionals typically follow standard procedures to complete the investigation task. This includes physically isolating the involved device to find out if it has been accidentally contaminated. The professionals also make several copies of media after which, it is documented and secured in a safe facility for updated maintenance. The entire investigation is based on a digital copy.
With the growth in security breaches in recent years, the role of cyber forensics has also grown eminently. Investigators utilize different forensics software applications and various techniques to examine the copies, look through hidden folders, and search unallocated disk spaces for copies and files that were damaged, encrypted, or deleted.
Naturally, computer forensics has great benefits for business. However, the only way to garner maximum benefit out of it is if you have an information technology team with the required scientific expertise. Information security training and accompanying certifications and coursework can play a significant role in gaining all the cyber forensics benefits.
For businesses, it is essential to offer information security training and other certifications to empower the enterprise teams to carry out the investigation in the event of a data breach.
Phases of Cyber Forensics Investigation
As mentioned earlier, cyber forensics investigations follow a set of standards to ensure its success and quick results. The following phases are often involved in retrieving computer evidence:
- Securing the devices: The first step is to secure the computer systems and other devices involved in the case. This is done to ensure the data and equipment are safe. The trained enterprise teams should ensure maximum information and system security to prevent unauthorized access to storage devices. In case the system or devices are connected with the internet, dismissing the connection first is essential.
- Check the data and files: As a professional, you must check every file and data in the system, including the encrypted files. Also, to create a strong backup of data, all the files should be copied. Other than that, the original system should be kept intact and preserved.
- Recover lost information: This is a crucial step. The evidence could be hidden in information that has been lost or deleted. Try to recover as much data as possible using applications. Information security certification can help detect deleted data, which may be retrieved.
- Reveal the important contents of all the programs and hidden files.
- Access and decrypt protected and hidden files.
- Identify the important areas: Do not forget areas that are not easily inaccessible.
- Document each and every step of the procedure. That's the only thing detectives can use to back their investigation. This is the best possible way to preserve important information without damaging or changing it.
- Be prepared to present the documents to testify in court.
Whether you have cyber forensics professionals or an enterprise team, information security training is the best way to empower your employees to carry out the investigation.
Business Benefits of Cyber Forensics and Training Your Team
In IT, network security forensics involves the analysis and monitoring the network traffic to collect information, detect network intrusions, and obtain legal evidence.
Here are some of the top benefits of cyber forensics for businesses:
- With computer forensics, a business is able to mitigate the risk of sampling. While an organization can always use external auditors or cyber forensics professionals, this is one benefit that it can gain using the on-board forensic team.
- The procedure enables the team to compare relevant data collected from different sources or symptoms. This comparison helps complete the big picture when investigating on a cybercrime case.
- Through investigation, the team can understand the trends related to the relevant data. The patterns can also help understand the fluctuations. Also, the team is able to analyze potential risk factors and false positives.
- There are identifying trends that enable the team to gain more details about the consultants, company personnel, and forensic accountants.
- The reports and investigation also help the team understand the control environment. The enterprise teams can learn about policies to identify the attributes that violate rules.
- Training the team on board to carry out the cyber forensics also help contain network costs.
- The team is prepared to recommend budget-friendly system upgrades and other relevant implementations.
- Helps identify increased threats and security vulnerabilities.
Conclusion
The team is equipped with all the important training required to identify corruption or misplacement of data or any threat of a virus that could damage the entire system. It requires proper training and expertise to carry out a detailed cyber forensics procedure. During the examination, the professional specialist or the team is completely prepared to handle the system and associated data. By offering the training, a business can easily gain all the amazing benefits related to cyber forensics.