A Breach Happened. Now What? Your Digital Forensics & Incident Response Playbook

A Breach Happened. Now What? Your Digital Forensics & Incident Response Playbook

The unthinkable just happened: your company’s systems were breached. Confidential data may be exposed, operations disrupted, and customer trust shaken. In that moment, panic is natural, but uncertainty isn’t.

Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) comes in to investigate the breach, limit damages and prevent similar future incidents from happening.

Part 1: Digital Forensics: Understanding What Happened

Digital forensics focuses on identifying, preserving, and analysing digital evidence to uncover how the breach occurred. It’s less about firefighting, more about root-cause discovery.

The five main stages of a forensic investigation are:

1. Identification – Determine that an incident has occurred and what evidence may exist.
2. Preservation – Secure the data in its current state so it isn’t altered or destroyed.
3. Collection – Gather relevant logs, emails, system images, and other evidence. Everything is labelled, recorded, and organized carefully.
4. Examination & Analysis – Extract and analyse the data to pinpoint the cause of the breach, such as malware, misconfigurations, or insider threats.
5. Documentation & Presentation – Summarize findings, explain the breach timeline, and provide recommendations to prevent recurrence.

Part 2: Incident Response – Stopping the Bleed

While digital forensics explains how it happened, incident response (IR) is about stopping attackers in their tracks and restoring business operations.

1. Preparation – Develop and test an incident response plan. Ensure staff know their roles.
2. Identification – Detect unusual activity, confirm whether it’s an attack, and escalate appropriately.
3. Containment – Limit attacker access by isolating systems, restricting permissions, or logging out accounts.
4. Eradication – Remove malware, wipe infected devices, disable compromised accounts, and eliminate persistence mechanisms.
5. Recovery – Restore systems, patch vulnerabilities, and return operations to normal.
6. Lessons Learned – Document the incident, improve policies, and invest in stronger defences

Why Both Matter: DF + IR

Think of forensics as the detective work and incident response as the emergency rescue team. You need both:

• Forensics tells you what happened and why.
• Incident response limits damage and restores business continuity.

Together, DFIR ensures your organization can survive an attack, recover quickly, and build resilience against the next one.

A data breach is not the end of the world but how you respond in the hours and days after makes all the difference. Organizations with a mature DFIR process can not only minimize financial and reputational damage but also strengthen their defences.

At TM Systems, we know that breaches don’t wait for the right time. Our team of experts is equipped to analyse incidents, collect and preserve digital evidence, and build safeguards to prevent future breaches.

If you want to ensure your organization is prepared for the unexpected, let’s talk