Webinar summary: Digital forensics and incident response — Is it the career for you?

Introduction

Infosec held a webinar with Cindy Murphy to find out about what it takes to get started in digital forensics and incident response. Cindy gives her take on how to get started in this highly technical field, and how she herself got started. 

Sprinkled throughout the webinar are pieces of wisdom and practical advice that can help you get started in the industry. In this article, we’ll do our best to distill some of this wisdom, helping you understand the type of work that a DFIR professional does, how to prepare for it with training and what, if any, education requirements there are. 

What are we talking about when we mention DFIR? 

What is digital forensics? In simple terms, it falls under the same umbrella as forensic science. We usually associate this kind of work with law enforcement, but private companies also carry out these types of services. It focuses primarily on evidence collection, recovery and investigation. 

Digital forensics is just one piece of the puzzle, though. Today, there is a strong need for incident response expertise to be coupled with digital forensics. Attacks are often still taking place when investigations get underway, so incident response is needed to mitigate and eliminate threats before investigative work can be undertaken.

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We call this combination of skill sets DFIR. It can be teams of people, or single professionals with knowledge in both fields. As we will discover, the more general knowledge a forensics professional has, the better.

The current state of digital forensics and incident response is one of positive growth. So much so, in fact, that the demand outstrips the supply by a long shot. 

I had the chance to hear from Cindy Murphy, who is President and Lead Examiner of Gillware Digital Forensics, to (Read more...)