The legitimate way for cyber forensic investigation process is the primary pillar of cybersecurity, as it helps in finding the critical evidence that is required to give unbiased opinions to solve the crime or dispute.

Thus, in today’s era, digital investigation or cyber forensics is a very important field to deal with multiple types of email threats that lead to cybercrimes. All the digital forensic investigation techniques are practiced so specifically that they ensure justice is served.

The most prominent industries that often follow the cyber forensic investigation process or rely on it are usually law enforcement. They basically retrieve the data from digital sources, analyze it to conclude, and represent it as evidence.

Therefore, there are multiple steps in the cyber forensics investigation process that help in tracing lawless activities, recovering lost data, and so on, with the use of specialized tools and techniques.

In total, these ways of investigation give a deep knowledge of digital crimes. Hence, before learning the cyber forensic investigation process, let’s first start from scratch.

Introduction to Cyber Forensics

So, the cyber forensics investigation process is a vital pillar of forensic science that targets to find, acquire, analyze, and report all the electronic evidence related to the case. These digital forensic investigation techniques are an important discipline to be followed for corporate security, criminal investigations, and cybersecurity. Thus, the entire digital forensics investigation is done very professionally, in which the cybercrime investigator safely collects the data and analyzes it.
In this, the forensic investigator tries to connect the events’ sequences to understand the scene and collect as much evidence as they can. The sources of evidence in cyber forensics investigation include hard drives, pen drives, phones, laptops, floppy disks, tablets, etc. The most crucial trait of digital forensics investigation is that it maintains the data authenticity and integrity to avoid alteration and access of the evidence to any external body.

Need For Cyber Forensic Investigation Process of Emails

• Emails contain a lot of evidence related to insider threats, identity theft, fraud, phishing, and more, which contributes a lot to the investigation.
• It also shares the details of the senders, timestamps, IP addresses, recipients, device used, and more data that is usually hidden in the metadata.
• The court accepts email as proof, and in this way, the investigators ensure that the emails are authentic and legally acceptable.
• Also, the cyber forensics investigation process of emails detects malware and security shortcomings.
• Last but not least, digital forensics also helps in maintaining regulatory and auditing email records.

What is the Cyber Forensic Investigation Process?

There are six crucial steps under the digital forensic investigation techniques. Have a quick read at them one by one.

1. Identify the sources: The primary step is to look around and find all the possible sources that may store the evidence or information. The investigators must have knowledge about such sources that can turn out to be helpful in the investigation process.
2. Collect the sources: Once the digital forensics practitioner finds the sources of evidence, they need to collect them from the crime scene. During this step, they have to ensure the complete security and authenticity of the digital sources so that there is no scope for manipulation or loss.
3. Examine the data: In this cyber forensic investigation step, the investigators use advanced software to find hidden data, retrieve the old or deleted files, and examine other doubtful activities within the collected devices.
4. Analyse the examined data: Now, from the retrieved evidence, the investigators connect the knots about how the incident took place, who the culprits/victims were, what the outcome was due to that, and more. Overall, it creates a correlation between everything, including communications, files, and events.
5. Document everything: Next, everything used, found, and concluded is documented to create transparency and credibility of everything. From the tools used and the evidence collected to the findings and the process, everything is documented in a professional yet clear way.
6. Present it: At last, the output of the cyber forensic investigation process is presented in front of the security team, legal body, corporate executive, etc.

Best Digital Forensic Investigation Techniques

Some of the most prominent and often used cyber forensic investigation techniques are as follows:

• Disk Imaging: This is basically creating a copy of the storage devices that has evidence to preserve the original evidence forever.
• Reverse Steganography: In this, the investigators extract the data embedded in audio, video, and images.
• Network investigation: This means examining the device’s connection with different routers, firewalls, and switches to check the communication sources when logs are not available.
• Time pattern analysis: In this cyber forensic investigation process, the investigators look for chronological events by checking the files, records, logs, etc.
• Recover Deleted File: This is the most important technique, which is done by using automated tools such as MailXaminer. It helps to restore the files that are being deleted intentionally and unintentionally.
  
  

Conclusion

Overall, the cyber forensic investigation process is the same for everyone, but their purposes vary depending on the needs of the situation. Thus, digital forensics plays a vital role in reading the digital footprints and finding the evidence seamlessly. With the advanced digital growth, this field is also boosting very rapidly and increasing the need for cybersecurity and investigation in almost all fields.