Cybersecurity Evidence Collection

Whether or not an attack becomes an incident, how long an outage persists, how many records get exposed, and what it costs to recover all, potentially, come down to cybersecurity evidence collection. Security teams need to be consistently looking for evidence, but at the same time that this evidence is becoming more important and abundant, the best evidence is also becoming more elusive.

Cybersecurity Evidence Collection: An Overview

What is cybersecurity evidence collection?

Also sometimes referred to as digital forensics, the term cybersecurity evidence collection describes everything done by security teams to understand the intentions of attackers—before, during, and after attacks. While some of this evidence may be found inside of the corporate network, left behind once attackers gained access and persistence, just as much or more evidence exists outside the network, in the wider digital world where hackers operate. Security teams increasingly rely on this evidence, collected from all sources, to get better at anticipating attacks, neutralizing incidents, and mitigating damage. 

What are the best practices for cybersecurity evidence collection?

Cybersecurity evidence, just like all evidence, must be handled carefully and consistently to protect its integrity. Best practices dictate following this process:

• Identification – Choosing where to focus evidence collection and for what purpose (eg. threat detection, compliance audit, etc.)
• Collection – Collecting as much evidence as possible without doing anything to compromise the quantity or quality. 
• Preservation – Storing the evidence in a secure location so that it cannot be lost or altered. 
• Analysis – Examining the evidence to determine what’s important and what it means for cybersecurity. 
• Documentation – Recording the results of the analysis in a standardized format along with the evidence collection process. 
• Reporting – Distributing a report on the entire process to all relevant stakeholders while keeping a copy in permanent record. 

Why is cybersecurity evidence collection beneficial?

Security teams have no shortage of signals and data sources supplied by their security tools, but much of that information relates to their immediate vicinity, the corporate network, making it hard to see incoming attacks until the last minute and difficult to trace incidents back to their original source. Cybersecurity evidence collection gives investigators, whether from the detection and response team, the incident response team, the legal or compliance team, or from another entity the ability to follow clues wherever they lead and see attacks earlier in their lifecycle. It can help with preventing attacks, stopping incidents, and/or recovering from breaches by unearthing information that hackers had hoped to keep hidden. 

Why is cybersecurity evidence collection challenging? 

Most organizations struggle with cybersecurity evidence collection despite their best efforts because it’s such a massive undertaking. Investigators first need to scour the entire digital world, spanning the clear, deep, and dark webs and the whole of social media. They need to look into some of the most guarded and secretive communities that exist online, where hackers sell, share, and brag about the most sensitive information at their disposal. And that effort must continue constantly, 24/7/365, to find evidence whenever and wherever it appears. With huge territory to cover and largely manual processes to rely on, security teams rarely collect as much evidence as they want or need. 

What Makes Cybersecurity Evidence Collection Increasingly Important? 

What is the role of cybersecurity evidence collection in today’s cybersecurity landscape? 

Traditional cyber defenses like firewalls, antivirus protections, and intrusion detection software are becoming less effective as cyber attacks evolve. Hackers now have AI to help them scale, accelerate, and iterate on attacks. Even more problematic, attackers are increasingly relying on stolen credentials and other identity-based exploits to easily bypass security controls and breach sensitive data silos. Needing to regain an advantage and think beyond traditional cybersecurity measures, more security teams are relying on cybersecurity evidence collection to see and stop a new generation of cyber attacks. Demands imposed by data privacy regulations, cybersecurity compliance requirements, and cyber insurance policies are also increasing the need for cybersecurity evidence collection. 

How will cybersecurity evidence collection evolve in coming years?

As cybercrime becomes both more common and more consequential, all signs suggest that cybersecurity evidence collection will mature rapidly, becoming more ubiquitous and more advanced. To that end, automation will be deployed to help scale the speed, simplicity, and sophistication of evidence collection, making it more accessible to security teams of all sizes as it quickly becomes a standard practice. 

What use cases apply to cybersecurity evidence collection? 

• Threat Exposure Management – Use cybersecurity evidence to learn where and how to manage threat exposures.
• Data leak monitoring – Discover how sensitive data is leaking out of the organization to stop the problem from continuing. 
• Compliance management – Collect evidence to either prove compliance or preemptively find issues that could cause non-compliance.
• Account takeover prevention – Find evidence of stolen credentials to deactivate those passwords or accounts before they get hijacked.  
• Identity Intelligence – Learn how identities are being weaponized in the wild to prevent attacks in the short term and improve the identity security strategy in the long term. 

How Flare Facilitates Cybersecurity Evidence Collection

How does Flare automate cybersecurity evidence collection?

Flare’s technology continuously monitors thousands of sources including dark web sites where hackers sell stolen credentials, code repositories where sensitive information gets accidentally exposed, and illicit Telegram channels where hackers scheme in secret. The technology automatically collects any cybersecurity evidence relevant to a user or organization, then organizes it onto the Flare platform for streamlined analysis and reporting. Collecting cybersecurity evidence manually is time- and labor-intensive, but automation not only replicates but improves upon that work, unearthing significantly more evidence with little to no time or human effort involved—until it’s time to act. 

What kinds of cybersecurity evidence collection can Flare perform?

Understanding the dynamic nature of cybersecurity evidence, Flare takes an agnostic approach to cybersecurity evidence, collecting anything and everything that could be valuable and letting users define what to collect. That said, some of the most valuable evidence that Flare collects includes: 

• Stolen passwords – Discover passwords that have been stolen by phishing attacks or infostealer malware.
• Exposed credentials – Learn which credentials have been exposed in data breaches or accidentally left in a public-facing place. 
• Leaked data – Track data leaking out of the organization and into places where hackers share and sell information and plan future attacks. 
• Unguarded secrets – Find intellectual property, proprietary code, private conversations, or other sensitive data that isn’t being properly protected. 
• Malicious plans – Spy on hacker communities to learn threat intelligence like when they plan to strike a specific organization and what their tactics and timing will be. 

How does Flare upgrade cybersecurity evidence collection? 

Flare enables security teams to collect cybersecurity evidence wherever it exists, in whatever form it takes, for any purpose it serves, as soon as it appears online. Evidence collection improves in every way, which in turn improves cybersecurity across the board. Once security teams have better insights into what hackers are planning to do, they can undermine those attacks more effectively, more quickly, and more consistently. Imagine having the opponent’s playbook. With Flare automating cybersecurity evidence collection, security teams stay one step ahead. 

Does Flare offer training in cybersecurity evidence collection? 

Even with a tool like Flare, cybersecurity evidence collection still requires a human element, especially to track elusive hackers and make sense of cryptic evidence. To hone this human element, we cover cybersecurity evidence collection in several trainings in the Flare Academy, including our most recent training about deanonymizing threat actors (check out the training materials in the Flare Academy Discord Community). Take advantage of these and other training sessions to get even more insights into cybersecurity evidence collection, plus valuable resources for practice, planning, and policy-making. glossary

Cybersecurity Evidence Collection and Training with Flare Academy

Flare Academy training provides security practitioners with highly relevant and highly engaging lessons on subjects like threat intelligence, operational security, investigation techniques, and more. Led by expert instructors, these free trainings combine on-demand video lessons with diverse learning tools. Students can also gain access to the Flare Academy Discord Community where they can ask questions, explore advanced topics, and continue their learning journey wherever it leads. 

Find the right option at Flare Academy: sign up for the next training here.