The Crucial Role of Data Forensics in Post-cyberattack Recovery

Imagine coming home to find someone has broken into your house. Your first reaction is to make sure it’s safe to go inside. Then, you quickly check that all the doors and windows are locked to secure your home. This immediate response is like your recovery time objective (RTO)—a fast effort to safely get systems back up and running.

Once the police arrive, the immediate threat is gone. But now comes the next step: figuring out what happened.

The police want to know: Who was here? How did they get in? What did they take? Every detail—like a fingerprint on the doorknob or a muddy footprint—becomes an important clue.

In cybersecurity, data forensics works the same way as investigators at a crime scene. 

Why Data Forensics Is Important

While forensics may not feel as urgent as restoring operations, it’s just as important for building a stronger, more secure defense strategy. Data forensics helps uncover how the attack happened, who was behind it, what data and systems were affected, what vulnerabilities were exploited, and how you can prevent being attacked again.  

Data forensics is also important for these reasons:

• The government needs info: If you’re hit by a ransomware gang or an entity on the OFAC list, the government gets involved and may impound your systems. They’ll want a detailed record of evidence for the investigation.
• Knowledge is protection: Understanding the whos, whats, hows, and whys will speed up analysis and identify what must be done to guard against future attacks.
• Processing insurance claims: If you have cyber insurance, the insurance company may want to investigate the attack. If you don’t have insurance, getting it is more difficult and expensive as cyberattacks continue increasing. However, you have a higher chance of getting insurance (and having your policy renewed) if you take proactive steps to defend against cyberattacks, which includes a strong data forensics plan.

Even if the government or insurance company doesn’t get involved with your cyberattack, you still must conduct a level of forensics to protect the business. That’s going to take time and the procedure is disruptive.

The smoothest way to get through it is by doing an excellent job of preserving your data. But this is often easier than it sounds.

Common Challenges to Capturing and Preserving Evidence

Managing data forensics is complicated. Here are a few of the biggest challenges companies face and tips for navigating them.

• Time constraints: You need to act fast to contain the attack and get the business fully functional. But preserving and analyzing evidence is a slow, careful process. Automated tools, such as an immutable backup solution, can help you quickly collect evidence required for a thorough investigation.

• Access to data: You’re swimming in data from countless sources. How do you find the critical clues without getting overwhelmed? Use tools like SIEM (security information and event management) and SOAR (security orchestration, automation, and response) platforms. These tools efficiently filter and correlate data to identify the point of attack and vulnerabilities.

• Lack of expertise: Data forensics is a specialized skill, and not every team has the expertise on hand. Invest in regular training for your IT team or consider contracting incident response experts when needed.

• Risk of evidence contamination: Investigating live systems can accidentally alter or destroy critical evidence. Stick to strict evidence-handling procedures to ensure everything remains admissible in court. Use write-blockers, isolate affected systems, and create bit-for-bit copies of the data for analysis, leaving the original evidence untouched.

• Backup integrity and reinfection risk: Restoring systems after an attack is tricky—63% of organizations risk reinfection because their backups contain malicious code. Use a solution, such as Pure Storage^® SafeMode™ Snapshots, that enables you to restore backups safely and quickly into a clean location.

• Legal and regulatory compliance: Different regions have different (and sometimes conflicting) laws about evidence handling and reporting breaches. Work with legal counsel to create an incident response plan that aligns with applicable laws. Stay informed about changes in regulations to ensure ongoing compliance.

• Post-incident analysis: After the attack is contained, the pressure to get back to normal can push post-incident analysis to the back burner. Make post-incident analysis a mandatory step in your response plan. Use it to identify lessons learned, justify the resources needed for thorough analysis, and strengthen your defenses for the future.

How Pure Storage Can Smooth Out the Forensics Process

On average, businesses can only recover about 59% of their data after a ransomware attack—but not if you use Pure Storage. Pure Storage gives you the tools you need for fast, effective data recovery and data forensics. Here’s how:

• Tamper-proof snapshots: Pure Storage SafeMode technology creates immutable (unchangeable) snapshots of your data. These backups are completely secure—they can’t be altered or deleted, even by attackers with administrative access. This means your data can be fully restored to the exact state it was in right before the attack happened. Not only does this speed up your return to normal operations, but it also simplifies the digital forensics process, helping you investigate what went wrong.

• Enhanced SIEM and SOAR capabilities: Pure Storage works with top SIEM and SOAR providers to deliver greater cyber resilience. Together, they enable you to spot potential attacks faster and respond automatically—like triggering SafeMode snapshots to lock down your critical data before it’s compromised.

Watch: How The Right Storage Can Help Improve Enterprise SIEM Operations

• Guaranteed clean storage: When your systems are attacked, Pure Storage quickly provides and sets up new storage equipment. Having a clean environment ensures that the forensics investigation can proceed smoothly in the background while you focus on getting business operations back on track.
  
• Cyber Recovery SLA: In addition to always-available clean storage for recovery and forensics, Pure Storage provides an SLA with a 48-hour recovery plan and bundled services, including an onsite professional services engineer to support your recovery.

After a breach, outage, or data theft, the first priority is to get systems back online as quickly as possible. Once everything is running again, it’s time for a deeper investigation, which takes a lot of time. That’s why Pure Storage designed its technology and support to help streamline the process—and aid you in gaining real insights that strengthen your cyber resilience.

Learn more about the Pure Storage Cyber Recovery and Resilience SLA in Evergreen//One™.

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