Want cloud-based forensics with less turmoil? Here are the top tech tips you will want to know.
March 27, 2020
March 27, 2020
Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know until you get your hands dirty.
When I took responsibility for producing an automated cloud solution, my first step was mapping my skills to available toolsets. Unfortunately few of those tools were mature, which meant I had to create an initial build roadmap with incomplete knowledge on how to best perform forensics in the cloud … and then rewrite portions of code to fill in previous unknowns.
Today, I’m hoping to save you some time and effort by sharing lessons learned.
Depending on the engagement, my team — the people from Accenture’s Security, Cyber Investigation and Forensics Response (CIFR) — traditionally works in three digital forensics ‘zones.’ We either 1) use a client’s infrastructure and tools, 2) copy data to an off-domain incident response (IR) workstation or 3) copy data to an IR team’s physical lab.
But lately we’ve increasingly been performing forensics in the cloud, which provides many advantages. But as I found out, it also takes considerable forethought.
For teams new to forensics in the cloud, keep the following in mind.
How does the data’s location affect formally commencing an investigation?
Data sources can exist anywhere — the client’s physical location, its cloud provider, or even on portable media — with each posing varying levels of retrieval difficulty. For an IR consultant who is onsite with the client, it may be as easy as, “I’m local to my data.” But many consultant teams can be offsite and scattered globally. What’s important is that no matter their location, all consultants need access to the same data. Therefore, consider the following questions:
What are the new deployment requirements?
There are several things to keep in mind here that involve both technical and non-technical staff.
Cloud or not, resource management is important. Consider what your current IT solutions can address. For example, are you:
Cloud deployments can answer all these questions, but those answers are not turnkey.
For more information, please contact a member of our CIFR team 24/7/365 by phone 888-RISK-411 or email CIFR.hotline@accenture.com.
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The second of this three-part blog series about how to implement and get the most from cloud-based cybersecurity forensics
The third of this three-part blog series about how to implement and get the most from cloud-based cybersecurity forensics