Cyber forensics is the discipline of collecting, preserving, analyzing, and presenting digital evidence in a manner that is legally admissible. It involves technical expertise, investigative skills, and understanding of legal frameworks.

It plays a key role in investigating cybercrimes, corporate fraud, data breaches, and unauthorized access incidents.

Key Concepts: Forensic imaging, chain of custody, evidence preservation, triage analysis.

Practical Exercise: Create a forensic image of a storage device, verify hashes, and document the process in a sample report.

Digital evidence includes any information stored or transmitted digitally that can prove or disprove events in an investigation. Examples include emails, chat logs, documents, metadata, cloud files, and network logs.

For evidence to be admissible, its authenticity, integrity, and chain of custody must be maintained.

Key Concepts: Volatile vs non-volatile data, file system artifacts, metadata analysis, hash verification.

Practical Exercise: Extract file metadata, recover deleted files, and analyze timestamps to establish a timeline of events.

Cybercrimes include hacking, phishing, ransomware, malware attacks, identity theft, financial fraud, and social engineering.

Understanding each type helps forensic experts detect and prevent attacks, while identifying appropriate tools and procedures for investigation.

Key Concepts: Threat vectors, attack lifecycle, risk assessment, cyber hygiene.

Practical Exercise: Analyze a simulated phishing email, identify malicious links, and document preventive measures.

Tools like EnCase, FTK, Autopsy, Wireshark, Volatility, Cellebrite, and X-Ways aid in evidence acquisition, analysis, and reporting.

Tools vary depending on the type of data: disk forensics, memory analysis, mobile forensics, or network traffic inspection.

Key Concepts: Live vs dead analysis, triage tools, hash verification, timeline analysis.

Practical Exercise: Use Autopsy or FTK Imager to recover deleted documents, generate hash values, and produce a basic report.

Network forensics involves monitoring, capturing, and analyzing network traffic to detect malicious activities or breaches. Logs, packet captures, and firewall data provide key evidence.

Common techniques include intrusion detection, packet sniffing, flow analysis, and reconstructing sessions to trace attacker activities.

Key Concepts: TCP/IP analysis, protocol inspection, session reconstruction, intrusion patterns.

Practical Exercise: Capture network traffic using Wireshark, detect anomalies, and document evidence in a network investigation report.

Mobile forensics deals with recovering data from smartphones, tablets, and IoT devices. Data types include call logs, messages, app databases, GPS logs, and cloud backups.

Ensuring data integrity and legal admissibility requires specialized tools like Cellebrite, MOBILedit, and Oxygen Forensic Detective.

Key Concepts: Logical vs physical acquisition, SIM card analysis, app artifact recovery, cloud synchronization.

Practical Exercise: Extract and analyze messages, contacts, and media files from a test mobile device, documenting all steps.

Cloud forensics examines data stored across cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Challenges include distributed storage, multi-tenant environments, and jurisdictional boundaries.

Investigators rely on API access, log analysis, snapshot captures, and cooperation with service providers to obtain evidence.

Key Concepts: Virtualized environments, access logs, snapshots, legal compliance, cloud-native artifacts.

Practical Exercise: Analyze activity logs of a sample cloud account, detect unauthorized access, and compile a report.

Forensic investigators must comply with laws, privacy regulations, and ethical standards. Mishandling evidence can invalidate investigations or lead to legal penalties.

Knowledge of GDPR, HIPAA, Cybercrime Acts, and national cyber laws is essential for ethical and lawful practice.

Key Concepts: Evidence admissibility, privacy protection, ethical decision-making, reporting obligations.

Practical Exercise: Review a hypothetical case and identify potential legal and ethical breaches in evidence handling.

Incident response includes identifying, containing, eradicating, and recovering from cyber attacks. Effective response minimizes damage and preserves evidence.

It involves coordination between IT teams, forensic experts, and management to document and report incidents.

Key Concepts: Incident lifecycle, containment strategies, evidence preservation, post-mortem analysis.

Practical Exercise: Simulate a malware attack in a lab, follow response steps, document findings, and propose improvements.

Documentation ensures that the investigation is clear, repeatable, and legally admissible. Reports should include methodology, findings, evidence details, and tool usage.

Clear, factual, and concise reporting strengthens the credibility of forensic investigations in legal proceedings.

Key Concepts: Evidence cataloging, timeline creation, report structuring, technical writing.

Practical Exercise: Create a detailed forensic report from a simulated case, including screenshots, recovered files, and conclusions.