Digital forensics offers ways to collect evidence from computers, data centers, and other electronic devices. Investigating a security breach helps companies find out how they were attached, but it is an assessment of the data that shows why they were attacked. Read about the workflow of digital evidence collection to see how these processes work.
Get the Alert for the Incident
The security design for the network offers alerts whenever an incident happens within the network. Through digital evidence management, network administrators create logs of all incidents after these alerts and begin the investigation. For many organizations, their IT departments do not have enough time during the day to investigate each incident, and business owners hire outsourced IT services to complete digital forensics and investigate for them.
Precure the Data From All Sources
The investigators track all data from each source and identify what happened. During a security breach, criminals search networks for vulnerabilities and ports they can access from outside the network. These vulnerabilities allow outsiders to steal data and corrupt files.
Digital investigations track the flow of the security breach to find its origin and determine if the perpetrator was an outsider or if an employee accessed data unethically. Collecting the data gives investigators more answers about how and why this data was targeted and how could it be used unlawfully.
Start a Case for the Incident
Next, the investigators start a case for the incident, and when a crime was committed, law enforcement is notified. Data theft often leads to identity theft and the misuse of financial data, and if investigators find links between the security breach and the misuse of a customer’s data, a criminal case begins against the perpetrator. Investigators create the case according to the severity of the crime and what evidence is required by law to prove guilt.
Analyze the Data for the Incident
An analysis of the data involved in the incident provides a link to why the security breach happened and what the criminal was looking for during their connection to the network. What the organization does speaks volumes as to why a criminal would access and steal data. For example, a healthcare organization that manages the care of high-profile individuals houses data for these figures that could be exploited to do physical harm or to ruin the person’s life.
Create an Archive for the Digital Evidence
At the end of the investigation, the service providers create an archive for the evidence and release it to law enforcement as needed. The archive is secured by robust security measures and prevents unauthorized access. Data backups are created for these archives to reduce the loss of data, and the archives have a separate log that shows who accessed them.
Digital evidence collection steps are necessary for managing evidence from all data sources and to provide proof in criminal cases. Businesses that suffer a security breach need a clear investigation of what happened and to find ways to close up exploited ports and compromised areas of the network. Learn more about the workflow of digital evidence collection to protect data in your investigations.
