What is Digital Forensics and Cyber Security? Clear Concepts Regarding Both
Following running statements are delivered by organizations for illustrating a difference between Cyber security and digital forensics:
“The core aim of adopting Cyber security is to protect down machines and provide prevention against hackers who are trying to gain access to them. While on the other hand, Digital Forensics is a different field where determining of exact cause for the Cyber threats take place, occurred on one’s machine.”
Unfortunately, the above-quoted statements are totally wrong. One need to make this thing very clear in mind that ‘security and forensics’ both these terms are closely related to each other. There is no existence of one word without another one. In order to clear concepts on ‘what is digital forensics and Cyber security’, we are here with this post. Proper definition over the same will be explained separately in the blog with a description of the relationship between both these terms, at the end.
What is Cyber Security?
The combination of processes, technologies, and controls designed to safeguard machines, organizational networks, and information from Cyber attacks is known as Cyber security. It reduces the cloud security risks and provides protection against unauthorized system exploitation, technologies, and networks. Almost large enterprises are well-known from the importance and strong measures to secure cloud database but still, there is lack of awareness among medium & small organizations about threats and vulnerabilities of cloud computing. It happens because enterprises under this category have an assumption that they cannot be a viable target.
Who knows who is the next in hacker’s eye and for what purpose? So, not only big but, medium and small firms should adopt cloud security measures, and apply them to Internet-connected machines. If in case, organizations are unknown from this then, several cloud security service providers are present in the market. They provide security-as-a-service providing assistance to the firm on how to keep sensitive data safe on cloud. Well, going in the favor of adopting Cyber security in IT business demands for efforts coordination throughout the data system, which comprises of:
- Network security
- Application security
- Information security
- Disaster recovery planning
- Operational security
- Awareness programs
Advisory firms are giving preference to a more proactive and update measures to get security against today’s trending Cyber threats like Ransomware.
What is Digital Forensics?
The procedure of revealing and interpreting the electronic content is termed as Digital forensics. The purpose of this is to extract evidences in an exact format as it was before committing the crime. Three basic activities are performed under a Digital forensic process i.e., Data collection, identification, and validation. Exposed content is used to display it in front of court for giving punishment to the person who committed the crime. Rigorous standards are demanded in evidentiary nature of Cyber forensics for standing up in cross-examination in the legal court. Several challenges are faced by digital forensic investigators while determining correct evidences from computer platforms. So, the suffering person should adopt digital forensic solutions that provides:
- Brief visibility over the actions and processes, which occurred on PCs, networks, and operating systems
- Ability to gain content from broad variety of components that comprises of traditional systems and machines, including smartphones / iPhones
- Capable enough to exhibit a comprehensive and forensic-sound investigation, without impacting ongoing work of the client
Difference Between Digital Forensics And Cyber Security
Both the digital forensics and Cyber security process is correlated to each other. They are almost same in one or the another way. The purpose of both cloud security services and digital forensics professionals is to completely stop cybercrime activity. A unique mindset needs to be shared among both to think in the way a criminal thought. This will help security experts to anticipate all possible Cyber attacks and hence, provide time to think over their prevention techniques. For sure it is impossible to be safe from all Cyber threats because who knows when a new threat occurs with what consequences. But, proper Cyber security solutions against cloud protection risks, will decrease the chances of data breach.
Unfortunately, sometimes attacks and intrusions happen and here comes the need for a forensic expert. Initially, an expert think like a criminal’s mindset enabling him / her to investigate the incident in a briefer manner. When digital forensic investigators put themselves in shoes of an attacker, they are capable of learning the purpose behind crime occurrence. This ability to think like a hacker, with combination of experts technical skills and knowledge, creates a combination of security professionals and Cyber forensic experts. They start rebuilding events in all possible manner and finally, determine the evidences left by the attackers while committing the crime. The responsibility of digital forensic experts do not finishes here! They also applies Cyber security solutions to prevent the threat occurrence in future and assists their clients to be updated with prevention measures.
Conclusion
This was all on ‘what is digital forensics and Cyber security’. Enterprises need to remember one thing that both these things are not at all different. They are correlated to each other and equally important in today’s digital scenario. Without cloud security, it is impossible to work flexibly with cloud in a safe mode and without digital forensic experts, its not possible to determine the trending Cyber attack and hence, the preventive measures against it.