Introduction
Digital forensics is a branch of forensic science that focuses on identifying, acquiring, processing, analysing, and reporting on data stored electronically.
Types of digital forensics
- Computer forensic
- Mobile device forensic
- Network forensic
- Cloud forensic
- Database forensic
Computer forensic:- Computer forensics is the process of investigating and analyzing digital evidence from computers and other devices to uncover facts about a crime or incident. It involves collecting, preserving, and analyzing data in a way that maintains its integrity and makes it admissible in court proceedings, helping law enforcement and other organizations to reconstruct events, identify responsible parties, or recover lost data.
Data collection and preservation: This involves gathering digital evidence from various sources like hard drives, smartphones, tablets, and networks while ensuring the original data is not altered.
Data analysis: Analysts use specialized tools to recover deleted files, decode encryption, and examine data for information related to the investigation.
Chain of evidence: A documented chain of custody is crucial to maintain the integrity and authenticity of the evidence for legal proceedings.
Legal admissibility: The primary goal is to gather evidence in a methodically sound way so it can be used in a court of law.
Applications: It is used in a wide range of cases, including criminal investigations, civil litigation, corporate investigations, and incident response for cybersecurity.
Mobile device forensic:- Mobile forensics is the process of recovering digital evidence from mobile devices using accepted methods. Unlike traditional digital forensics investigations, mobile forensics solely focuses on retrieving information from mobile phones such as smartphones, Android phones, and tablets.
Network forensic:- Network forensics is the process of monitoring, capturing, recording, and analyzing network traffic to investigate security incidents and gather evidence. It involves using scientific methods to collect data and analyze it to understand network attacks, detect intrusions, and identify malicious activity. The goal is to reconstruct events, determine the scope of a breach, and identify the source of an attack for both security and legal purposes.
Cloud forensic:- Cloud forensics is a specialized branch of digital forensics that involves identifying, preserving, analyzing, and presenting evidence from cloud environments after a cyber incident. It is used to investigate data breaches, malicious activity, and other security incidents by examining cloud-based assets like servers, networks, and applications, even when the data is virtual, distributed, and hosted by a third party.
Investigates cloud environments: Unlike traditional digital forensics which focuses on physical hardware, cloud forensics deals with the complexity of virtualized, multi-tenant cloud infrastructures, says skillogic.com.
Gathers evidence: It involves collecting and analyzing data from various sources within the cloud, including logs, user activities, and system data, to reconstruct security events.
Addresses unique challenges: The distributed and dynamic nature of the cloud creates challenges such as data fragmentation and volatility, requiring specific tools and techniques to ensure data integrity and prevent evidence from being lost or overwritten, notes University of Hawai'i–West O\'ahu.
Aims to improve security: The ultimate goal is not only to investigate an incident but also to identify the root cause and vulnerabilities to improve the organization's overall cloud security posture and protect its assets, according to Ackcent.
Supports legal prosecution: The evidence gathered can be used for legal proceedings to prosecute individuals or groups responsible for criminal activity conducted via the cloud, notes EC-Council.
Database forensic:- Database forensics is the branch of digital forensics that involves the investigation and analysis of databases to find evidence of unauthorized access, data manipulation, or other cybercrimes. This process includes identifying, preserving, recovering, and analyzing data within a database to reconstruct events, verify user activities, and support legal or corporate investigations. It requires specialized knowledge of both database systems and digital forensics to examine database contents and transaction logs.
Evidence recovery: Experts use specialized tools to recover deleted records or log files that may contain crucial evidence.
Activity reconstruction: Investigators analyze transaction logs and other metadata to create a timeline of events, showing who accessed or altered the data and when.
Intruder identification: The analysis helps identify intruders' activities, methods, and motives during a security breach or attack.
Compliance and legal support: It is used in legal proceedings to prove or disprove claims, verify the integrity of data in a dispute, or support a company's compliance requirements.
Forensic soundness: During an investigation, a read-only method or a forensic copy of the database is used to ensure the original data remains untainted and the evidence is admissible in court.
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