Cloud Computing Forensics Readiness

March 8, 2017 / G C Network / Comments Off

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Why the Cloud? Processing, Exploitation and Dissemination

By G C Network | October 23, 2008

So why is the intelligence community so interested in cloud computing? Three letters: PED (Processing, Exploitation, Dissemination). Take these two real life examples from the publishing industry. Jim Staten of…

World Summit of Cloud Computing: “Enterprise Cloud Computing” work group

By G C Network | October 22, 2008

To leverage attendees of the World Summit of Cloud Computing, a kick-off meeting of the “Enterprise Cloud Computing” work group will be held near Tel Aviv, Israel on December 3,…

Cloud Package Management

By G C Network | October 21, 2008

In his post “Missing in the Cloud: package management“, Dave Rosenberg highlights a critical issue in the adoption of cloud computing by government agencies. “I dare say that a standard…

PlugIntoTheCloud.com

By G C Network | October 20, 2008

Information Week has just launched PlugIntoTheCloud.com as their cloud computing destination. In his Non Linear Thinking blog, Bill Martin calls it a movement aimed at “providing a source and forum…

Is the cloud computing hype bad?

By G C Network | October 17, 2008

From Gartner “Why a little cloud hype might be useful“: “It’s too simplistic to say cloud hype is bad . If we are technically expert is might irritate us with…

Stop the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) !!

By G C Network | October 16, 2008

Dan Morrill! Count me in !! In his excellent article, “Cloud Computing is Scary – But the FUD Has to Stop“, Dan makes some excellent points: It is time to…

IBM, Microsoft and Google

By G C Network | October 15, 2008

On October 6th, IBM launched their cloud services initiative. This is a: “[C]ompany-wide initiative that extends its traditional software delivery model toward a mix of on-premise and cloud computing applications…

Government in the Cloud

By G C Network | October 13, 2008

Back in mid-September, there was quite a thread in the Google Cloud Computing Group on the use of cloud computing by the federal government. Some of the interesting comments were:…

CloudCamp Partners With SOA-R !!

By G C Network | October 10, 2008

I’m proud to announce that the final SOA-R Cloud Computing Education Event will be held in collaboration with CloudCamp. Now dubbed CloudCamp:Federal, the event will be held as an “unconference” to help…

Federal Cloud Computing Wiki

By G C Network | October 9, 2008

With the fast growing interest in cloud computing, the Federal Government community has established a Federal Cloud Computing Wiki. This wiki is managed by Dr. Brand Niemann, Senior Enterprise Architect…

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In today’s globally connected world, data security breaches are bound to occur. This, in turn, increases the importance of digital forensic readiness, or the ability to access and trust computer log data in the identification of a breach and the determination of what datasets may have been compromised. As organizations rapidly move into the cloud, the complexities of this multi-jurisdictional and multi-tenancy environment has made the importance of cloud forensics even more pronounced. This reality has also drastically heightened the legal risk associated with information technology operations. Cloud and digital forensics readiness are therefore critical to business disaster recovery, continuity of business services and cloud ecosystem management.

The benefits of digital forensic readiness include:

Reducing the cost of cyber investigations;
Quick determination of relevant attack vector;
Reduction in the cost for data disclosure;
Faster restoration from damage; and
Cyber insurance discounts.

Forensic readiness will also help your organization regain control after any sort of data breach. It will help limit the damage and costs from just about any digital incident. When forensics readiness is taken into account, post breach digital investigation often become simpler in that retrieval of digital evidence can occur without running into some of the better known challenges. Even more important is when forensics is part of the business continuity plan, digital evidence is actually acquired and stored before an incident occurs without interrupting business operations.

Cloud and digital forensics should be looked at across three separate dimensions: technical, organizational, and legal. The technical dimension is mainly focused onL

Forensics data collection;
Elastic, static and live forensics;
Evidence segregation;
Investigations in virtualized environments; and
Pro-active preparations.

The organization dimension is strongly influenced by the roles played by the relevant cloud service provider and the cloud service consumer. To establish a forensic capability, these organizations must define a staffing structure that fulfills the following critical roles:

Investigators: Responsible for collaborative investigation allegations of misconduct in the Cloud and working with external assistance or law enforcement when needed.
IT Professionals: System, network, and security administrators, ethical hackers, cloud security architect, and technical support staff in the cloud organization.
Incident Handlers: The team that responds to a variety of specific security incidents, such as unauthorized data access, accidental data leakage and data loss, breach of tenant confidentiality, inappropriate system usage, malicious code infections, malicious insider attack, (distributed) denial of service attacks, etc.
Legal Advisors: Staff familiar with multi-jurisdiction and multi-tenant issues in the Cloud that will ensure that any forensic activities will not violate regulations under respective jurisdiction(s) or confidentialities of other tenant(s) sharing the same resource(s).
External Assistance: Typically, it is wise for the cloud organizations to rely on a combination of its own staff and external parties to perform forensic tasks such as e-discovery, investigations on civil cases, investigations on external chain of dependencies. The responsibility of any external party should be determined in advance and made clear relevant policies, guidelines and agreements.

The legal dimension primarily revolves around multi-jurisdiction and multi-tenancy challenges and the terms of use as specified in the CSP Service Level Agreement (SLA). Specific topics that should always be addressed within the SLA include:

· Service provided, techniques supported and access granted by the CSP to the customer regarding forensic investigation;

· Trust boundaries, roles and responsibilities between the CSP and the cloud customer regarding forensic investigation;

· How forensic investigations are secured in a multi-jurisdictional environment in terms of legal regulations, confidentiality of customer data, and privacy policies; and

· How forensic investigations are secured in a multi-tenant environment in terms of legal regulations, confidentiality of customer data and privacy policies

Experts recommend a focus in three primary aspects:

Preparation: Create and maintain the conditions that enable you to respond timely and effectively to any digital incident.
Partnering: Forge relations with and external specialists and stakeholders when it comes to dealing with digital incidents before a crisis occurs.
Evolving: Periodically rehearse, evaluate and update your response plan.

Forensics is a core requirement of good organizational hygiene, alongside business continuity and disaster recovery and should always be specified in standard contract clauses. Businesses without forensic readiness planning and testing in place are just as negligent as those that fail to plan for business continuity or disaster recovery. By implementing and testing their forensic readiness, a business can prepare itself to be in a much better position when – not if – a security incident occurs.

This post was brought to you by IBM Global Technology Services. For more content like this, visit ITBizAdvisor.com