How can you manage incident response and forensics in the cloud?

1 Define your scope

The first step to manage incident response and forensics in the cloud is to define your scope. This means identifying what cloud services and resources you use, who is responsible for them, and what data and assets are involved. You also need to understand the service level agreements (SLAs) and contracts with your cloud providers, as they may affect your rights and obligations in case of an incident. For example, some cloud providers may not allow you to access or collect certain data or logs, or may have different retention policies and deletion processes.

2 Prepare your plan

The next step is to prepare your plan for incident response and forensics in the cloud. This means having a clear and documented process for detecting, analyzing, containing, eradicating, and recovering from an incident, as well as reporting and communicating with relevant stakeholders. Your plan should also include the roles and responsibilities of your team, the tools and techniques you will use, and the legal and regulatory requirements you will follow. You should also test and update your plan regularly, and train your staff on how to execute it.

3 Use cloud-native tools

One of the advantages of cloud computing is that it offers many cloud-native tools that can help you manage incident response and forensics in the cloud. These tools can provide you with visibility, monitoring, alerting, logging, auditing, backup, encryption, isolation, and automation capabilities that can enhance your security posture and response efficiency. For example, you can use CloudTrail and CloudWatch in AWS, Azure Monitor and Azure Security Center in Microsoft Azure, or Stackdriver and Cloud Security Command Center in Google Cloud Platform.

4 Supplement with third-party tools

While cloud-native tools can offer many benefits, they may not be enough to cover all your incident response and forensics needs in the cloud. Therefore, you may need to supplement them with third-party tools that can provide you with additional or specialized functions. For example, you may need tools that can perform network analysis, malware analysis, memory analysis, disk analysis, or data recovery in the cloud. Some of the third-party tools that can help you with incident response and forensics in the cloud are Wireshark , Volatility , The Sleuth Kit , or Recuva .

5 Preserve your evidence

One of the most important aspects of incident response and forensics in the cloud is to preserve your evidence. This means collecting and storing the data and artifacts that can prove what happened, who was involved, and what was the impact of the incident. You should follow the principles of integrity, authenticity, chain of custody, and admissibility when preserving your evidence in the cloud. You should also use appropriate formats, encryption, hashing, and digital signatures to ensure the validity and security of your evidence.

6 Learn from your incidents

The last step to manage incident response and forensics in the cloud is to learn from your incidents. This means analyzing the root causes, impacts, and lessons learned from the incident, and applying them to improve your security posture and response capabilities. You should also document and share your findings and recommendations with your team, management, and external parties, as appropriate. You should also review and update your plan, tools, and processes based on your feedback and best practices.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?