As the threat landscape evolves alongside organizations’ move toward digital-first operations and cloud-based applications, part of a robust cybersecurity strategy becomes not just preventing attacks but knowing how best to respond if and when one occurs.
That response, specifically digital forensics incident response (DFIR), is the key to mitigating and recovering from a cyber incident.
What is Digitial Forensics Incident Response (DFIR)?
Digital forensics incident response (DFIR) refers to the combination of two disciplines — digital forensics and incident response — the two main components organizations turn to when mitigating and recovering from a cyber incident.
In practice, DFIR is focused on identifying, investigating, and remediating a cyber incident within an environment.
A digital forensics investigation focuses on the collection and analysis of digital evidence present in the environment – including user behavior, data changes, network activity, and more in order to determine the root cause and extent of an attack – while incident response (IR) focuses on stopping and remediating the incident, as well as subsequent restoration activities. The two practices often work in tandem during an incident, as the information provided by the digital forensics team can inform what actions the incident response team takes, limiting the attack’s scope and, hopefully, reducing downtime and potential financial loss. Digital forensics is also vital post-IR to help organizations understand what exactly occurred and how to prevent a future attack.
How a Digital Forensics Investigation Works
The core of a DFIR retainer is the digital forensics element, or the collecting, preserving and analyzing of evidence left after a cyber incident.
Common capabilities within digital forensics include:
- Investigation of malicious activity
- Malware reverse engineering
- Threat intelligence gathering
- Incident recovery, from initial detection to postmortem
- Threat actor negotiations
- Completing findings reports, including legal-focused reports
- Data recovery assistance
All digital forensics investigations follow a standard set of stages, which are:
1. Identifying the attack vector
2. Assessing the impact
3. Supporting incident response in real time
4. Gathering evidence for legal council
5. Providing reports for compliance, legal, and others
6. Reducing downtime and incident costs
Each stage not only helps the incident response team take proper action in the moment to reduce potential downtime, but it helps organizations understand how an attack happened, why, and what steps can be taken to prevent a similar incident in the future.
For example, if a social engineering attack is successful and a threat actor gains credentials and subsequently uses them to change permissions on an application, the digital forensics team could determine whose credentials were compromised and how, what permissions were changed, and what other parts of the network the threat actor gained access to with those credentials. This digital evidence is vital for the IR team as they work to isolate endpoints, possibly change credentials, and shut down applications.
Explore digital forensics in-depth.
The Role Incident Response Plays in DFIR
While digital forensics is focused on gathering evidence, incident response uses that evidence to take action, remediating and restoring the environment. Broadly, IR is the set of processes and tools utilized to identify, contain, and remediate a cyber incident. Incident response typically follows a standard life cycle with proactive and reactive components. Proactive IR refers to incident planning and incident readiness, and reactive IR refers to the in-the-moment incident response to an attack, including mitigation, restoration, damage containment, and analysis.
This life cycle starts with planning and readiness, and continues with detection and analysis, containment, eradication and recovery, and then post-incident review. Digital forensics is a critical part of the containment, eradication, recovery, and post-event stages of the life cycle, as the IR team often relies on the information provided by digital forensics, at least during the initial forensic stage, to ensure they are taking the proper steps during restoration.
But DFIR is not just a discipline that occurs in the moment of attack. DFIR retainer services are becoming a popular option for organizations looking to invest in proactive IR.
DFIR Retainer Services
Focused on resilience and incident readiness, DFIR retainer services, according to Gartner, “help organizations assess and manage the impact of a security incident,” and are meant to augment capacity and capability during incident response. While, traditionally, IR and digital forensics were handled by different teams or even firms, the lines have now blurred with more and more organizations seeking out a single vendor and team to handle every aspect of an incident.
In the Market Guide for Digital Forensics and Incident Response Retainer Services Gartner states that vendors within this emerging marketplace should have the following capabilities to qualify as a DFIR provider, including:
- Assessment of IR policies and procedures
- Post-incident response assistance in the scope of digital forensics and incident response
- Prepaid retainers that offer access to IR capabilities within an agreed upon SLA
These retainers work to assist organizations both before and during an incident, offering proactive services as well as full digital forensics investigation and emergency incident response capabilities.
It should be noted that the terms and agreements of DFIR retainers will vary by provider. The retainer can come in multiple forms, including ad-hoc engagements, prepaid retainers, or zero-dollar/zero-hours retainers.
The Value of DFIR
DFIR retainers provides high value to organizations looking to reduce their risk and respond to cyber incidents stronger and faster.
Benefits of obtaining a DFIR retainer include:
- Helps meet a common requirement of insurability according the 2024 Gartner® Market Guide for Digital Forensics and Incident Response Retainer Services, which states that cyber insurance providers are more frequently mandating clients have some kind of retainer in place
- Likelihood of reduced downtime during an incident
- Potential for reduced costs during an incident
- Ability to harden defenses post-incident based on digital forensics findings
- Assistance with reports for compliance and legal post-incident
- Often, a lower hourly rate during an incident is available to customers with a retainer
DFIR offerings and capabilities can differ from vendor to vendor, so organizations should work with stakeholders to evaluate and choose a vendor that they believe is best for their business goals and organizational risk level.
DFIR and Arctic Wolf® Incident Response
As part of our mission to help your organization reduce, mitigate, and transfer risk, Arctic Wolf Incident Response is designed to assist in stopping an attack and quickly restoring an organization to pre-incident business operations.
Customers who engage with Arctic Wolf for IR services have access to the critical emergency incident response service needed to get back to pre-incident operations. With active defense and monitoring, advanced forensics, business recovery, and threat actor negotiation expertise in-house, you won’t need to slow your response to onboard a third-party mid-incident.
Arctic Wolf also works to prepare organizations before an incident occurs. Arctic Wolf® Incident Response Jumpstart Retainer offers a 1-hour scoping call SLA, IR plan assistance and review, incident runbooks, and discounted hourly rates for IR services for our insurance-approved IR team.
Learn more about Arctic Wolf Incident Response.
Explore DFIR providers, requirements, and the marketplace with the Gartner Market Guide for Digital Forensics and Incident Response.
