Forensic analysis is the disciplined investigation of digital systems and data to reconstruct events, attribute actions and preserve evidence to an evidentiary standard. In security it follows an incident to determine how a breach occurred, what was affected and who was responsible, maintaining a defensible chain of custody throughout. It draws on log analysis, memory and disk examination, and timeline reconstruction.
Overview
- Digital forensic analysis sits at the heart of incident response and litigation support. It transforms raw artefacts such as logs, disk images and memory dumps into a defensible reconstruction of what happened, suitable for remediation decisions and, where needed, legal proceedings.
Mechanisms
- Evidence acquisition and chain-of-custody preservation
- Disk, memory and network artefact examination
- Timeline reconstruction and event correlation
- Reporting to remediation, legal and regulatory stakeholders
Applications
- Post-breach investigation and attribution
- Insider-threat and fraud investigation
- Litigation and regulatory evidence preparation
- Malware behaviour reconstruction