How to streamline cyber forensic investigations

Cyber forensic investigations are a critical component of any incident response process. While such investigations are important, gathering forensic details post-incident can be a cumbersome manual task. But with the right solutions in place–and fully integrated—you can significantly streamline investigations and ensure your enterprise remains protected, even against the most advanced threats.

The problem: Disparate security tools

Many security operations (SecOps) teams utilize disparate tools to monitor and respond to alerts. Although this piecemeal method can work, completing a cyber forensic investigation this way is a time-consuming task. Investigators are forced to gather evidence from multiple third-party systems and locations, which makes the entire process take significantly longer.

What’s more, being forced to gather information from multiple sources can cause one alert investigation to take anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes. With organizations receiving upwards of 10,000 to 150,000 alerts a day, manually investigating each one takes more hours than there are in a day and more manpower than is typically available. But a single alert left uninvestigated could lead to a potential breach, so you are left stuck. Every alert needs to be investigated but you simply don’t have the right resources for that to be possible using traditional response methods.

The solution: Automate cyber forensic investigation with SOAR

Security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) provides SecOps teams with the tools they need to automate and orchestrate multiple aspects of their incident response processes. Using advanced orchestration capabilities, teams centralize their disparate tools into a single dashboard simplifying cyber forensic investigation and providing a comprehensive picture of your security landscape. Utilizing security automation, appropriate incident response steps can be triggered automatically, removing the need for human intervention unless absolutely necessary.

A SOAR-enabled forensic investigation

A SOAR platform can execute templated queries against the SIEM and attach relevant logs to the record automatically, right as the compromise is detected. Next, it initiates a memory dump and takes a disk image as further evidence for the security analyst.

Once the automatic processes are complete, the investigation record includes all necessary evidence and data. From there, the analyst can easily understand the breach attempt and determine next steps. Using SOAR, analysts can spend more time analyzing and responding to alerts rather than performing time-consuming administrative tasks.

Comprehensive SOAR with Swimlane

Swimlane streamlines investigations by automating forensic data, integrating disparate tools and providing a centralized repository for all collected evidence. Integrated case management then provides immediate, intuitive access to the details necessary to conduct an investigation. This enables security analysts to then spend more time analyzing and less time performing administrative functions.

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How SOAR can help in the real-world.

To learn about more ways you can implement SOAR in the real world, download our Security Orchestration, Automation and Response Use Cases e-book.

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