what is Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR)

Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) is a critical discipline within cybersecurity that focuses on identifying, investigating, and responding to security incidents and breaches. DFIR combines two complementary fields: digital forensics, which involves the collection and analysis of digital evidence, and incident response, which focuses on the real-time management and resolution of cybersecurity incidents. Together, they provide organizations with the ability to detect attacks, limit damage, understand what happened, and recover securely.

Digital forensics is the investigative side of DFIR. It involves collecting and analyzing data from various digital sources—such as hard drives, memory, network traffic, and cloud systems—to uncover what occurred during a cyber incident. The goal is to reconstruct the timeline of an attack, identify compromised systems, determine how the attacker gained access, and gather evidence that may be used in legal proceedings. This process must follow strict protocols to ensure evidence integrity and maintain chain-of-custody.

Incident response, on the other hand, focuses on the immediate actions taken during and after a cyberattack. When an incident is detected, the incident response team works quickly to identify the nature and scope of the threat, contain its spread, eliminate the malicious actor or software, and recover affected systems. Incident response is typically organized into several phases: preparation, detection, containment, eradication, recovery, and lessons learned. A well-practiced incident response plan can significantly reduce the impact of an attack.