The Role of Digital Forensics in Incident Response

Incident Response (IR) is the firefighting; Digital Forensics is the arson investigation. They go hand-in-hand. Forensics provides the intelligence needed to contain the breach effectively and prevent recurrence.

The Digital Forensics Process

1. Identification: Determining what evidence exists (logs, disk images, memory dumps).
2. Preservation: Securing the evidence to prevent tampering. This involves creating cryptographic hashes of the data.
3. Analysis: Using tools to reconstruct the timeline of the attack. How did they get in? What did they take?
4. Documentation: Creating a report that can stand up in a court of law.

Key Forensic Artifacts

• Memory (RAM): Contains running processes, open network connections, and sometimes encryption keys or passwords. It is volatile and must be captured first.
• Windows Registry: A goldmine of information about user activity, installed software, and connected devices (USB history).
• Event Logs: Security, System, and Application logs record logins, service starts, and errors.
• MFT (Master File Table): Contains metadata about every file on an NTFS volume, including creation and modification timestamps.

Methodology: Live Response

In modern IR, we often perform "Live Forensics" on running systems using EDR tools or scripts (like KAPE) to triage data quickly without taking the system offline immediately.