Fundamentals of Digital Forensics

This blog provides you with a brief overview of the fundamentals of Digital Forensics. We will cover the explanation of digital forensics, what are the objectives, and when your organization needs digital forensics services. Please make a note that we will use both the terms digital forensics and computer forensics interchangeably.

What is Digital Forensics?

To understand digital forensics, you should know about forensics. In simple terms, forensics is a set of methods and techniques to establish facts of crime in a court of law.

Now, learn about Digital Forensics. It is a set of methods, procedures, and techniques used to collect digital evidence. Remember, collected evidence must be acceptable during legal and administrative proceedings. Here, we are collecting evidence from digital devices such as computers, mobile, hard disks, pen drives, etc.

Digital Forensics ensures that collected evidence is properly examined and able to serve its purpose in a court of law.

Objectives of Digital Forensics

The main objective of digital forensics is to collect evidence in a form that is acceptable in a court of law. Although, we can break the objective into the following :

(1) Identify digital evidence, gather it, and preserve it for the future.

(2) Estimate the damage caused by cybercrime in the victim organization

(3) Recommend mitigation techniques to save the organization in future

(4) Help in minimizing losses (tangible and intangible) of victim organizations because of cyber incidents

(5) Provide support for the prosecution of the perpetrator

When are Digital Forensic Services Required?

Sr. No.	Usage
1.	Preparation is needed to secure the organization from any cyber incident
2.	Identify actions needed to secure organization
3.	Estimate and minimize damage caused by cyber incidents
4.	Help in the preparation of policy documents in case of any cyber incidents
5.	Recover deleted files/folders from digital evidence

Users of Digital Forensics

There are many users of taking services of Digital Forensics. Some of them are mentioned below:

(1) Law Enforcement Agencies - for collecting, analyzing, preserving, and presenting digital evidence in a court of law

(2) Data Recovery Agencies - To recover data of victim organization/individual

(3) Insurance Companies - to investigate digital fraud

(4) Academia - for providing courses and diploma

(5) Defence/Military - to gather information or intelligence about the enemy

(6) Individuals - may utilize the services in case of sexual harassment, wrongful termination, etc.

Conclusion

Remember, digital Forensics is a science. You need to apply pre-defined methods and procedures to extract information that is used in a court of law. To learn about this subject, you must enhance skills in the field of operating systems (Linux, MAC, etc.), network communication, etc.