Digital Forensics
When a security incident occurs, understanding what happened is essential. An unusual login, compromised account, infected device, missing data, or suspicious employee activity may provide only a small part of the overall picture.
Digital evidence can help establish how an incident began, which systems and accounts were involved, what actions took place, and whether sensitive information was accessed or removed. However, evidence can be altered or lost if affected devices and systems are handled incorrectly.
Digital Forensics from CA helps your organisation collect, preserve, examine, and interpret digital evidence. We combine technical investigation with clear reporting to support incident response, internal reviews, legal discussions, regulatory obligations, and informed business decisions.
Why This Matters
The first hours of an investigation can have a significant effect on the evidence available later. Systems may continue to change, logs may be overwritten, temporary data can disappear, and well-intended recovery work may remove information needed to understand the incident.
Organisations also need to avoid reaching conclusions too quickly. A suspicious file or account does not necessarily explain the full incident. Evidence from endpoints, servers, cloud services, identity platforms, email systems, networks, and applications may need to be examined together.
A structured digital forensic investigation helps you:
Establish what happened
Create a reliable timeline of relevant events and identify the systems, accounts, information, and actions involved.
Understand the scope of an incident
Determine whether suspicious activity was limited to one device or affected a wider part of the organisation.
Preserve important evidence
Collect and handle digital information in a controlled way that maintains its integrity and future usefulness.
Support reliable decisions
Provide technical and business leaders with evidence-based findings instead of assumptions or incomplete information.
Our Approach
We do not begin an investigation with a fixed conclusion about what happened. Digital forensic work must be objective, methodical, and guided by the available evidence.
Our approach considers the full context of the incident. We examine relevant devices, systems, accounts, data sources, user activity, and security records while considering the business importance of the affected environment.
The scope and urgency of the investigation are adapted to the situation. An active compromise may require immediate evidence preservation and containment support, while an internal review may allow a more planned examination.
Define the investigation and preserve evidence
We begin by understanding the suspected incident, the questions the investigation needs to answer, and the systems, people, and business processes that may be involved.
We identify relevant evidence sources. These may include laptops, workstations, servers, mobile devices, virtual systems, cloud platforms, email accounts, identity services, business applications, network logs, and security tools.
Evidence is collected and preserved using controlled procedures. We document where it came from, when it was acquired, who handled it, and which methods were used.
Where an incident is still active, preservation activities are coordinated with containment and recovery needs. This helps protect important evidence without unnecessarily delaying action to secure the organisation.
Examine systems and reconstruct activity
We analyse the collected information to identify relevant files, processes, account activity, communications, system changes, connections, and other indicators.
The investigation may examine malware execution, unauthorised access, credential use, file creation or deletion, data transfers, external connections, persistence mechanisms, administrative actions, and attempts to hide activity.
Information from different sources is brought together to create a timeline. This helps show how separate events relate to one another and whether the activity moved across several devices, accounts, or services.
We distinguish confirmed evidence from reasonable interpretations and unresolved questions. This prevents uncertain information from being presented as a proven fact.
Determine the scope, cause, and potential impact
We use the available evidence to understand how the incident occurred and what it may have affected.
This includes identifying the likely initial access route, compromised accounts or devices, actions taken after access was obtained, security controls that were bypassed, and information that may have been viewed, changed, removed, or destroyed.
We also consider whether the same weakness or attacker activity may be present elsewhere in the environment. Indicators discovered during the investigation can be used to search other systems and identify related activity.
The potential business impact is assessed together with relevant technical findings. This may include service disruption, exposure of confidential information, financial loss, legal implications, regulatory reporting, or harm to customers and partners.
Report findings and support further action
We present the investigation results in a clear report supported by relevant technical evidence.
The report explains what is known, how the conclusions were reached, which questions remain open, and what the findings may mean for the organisation. Technical details are included for specialist teams, while the main conclusions are presented in language suitable for management and other stakeholders.
Recommendations may include additional containment, password resets, system rebuilding, monitoring, security improvements, wider evidence collection, or further specialist investigation.
Where required, we can support discussions with legal advisers, insurers, regulators, auditors, law enforcement, or other authorised parties. The final approach is agreed with the organisation and adapted to the purpose of the investigation.
What Sets CA Apart
Evidence-led investigation
Our conclusions are based on collected and reviewed evidence rather than assumptions about how the incident occurred.
Technical findings in business context
We explain what forensic results may mean for operations, information, customers, legal obligations, and business decisions.
Controlled handling of digital evidence
We apply clear procedures for collecting, preserving, analysing, and documenting evidence.
Support beyond the investigation
We help the organisation use forensic findings to guide containment, recovery, communication, and longer-term security improvement.
The Business Value
Digital Forensics from CA gives your organisation a clearer and more reliable understanding of a suspected or confirmed security incident.
Evidence-based findings help decision-makers distinguish the known facts from assumptions. This supports more proportionate containment, recovery, legal, regulatory, and communication decisions.
A clear timeline and defined scope can prevent the organisation from treating every system as equally affected. Technical teams can focus their efforts on the accounts, devices, services, and information that require the greatest attention.
The investigation can also reveal weaknesses that allowed the incident to occur or made it harder to detect. These may include incomplete logging, excessive access, unsupported systems, weak monitoring, or unclear response procedures.
The result is stronger evidence, better-informed decisions, a more focused response, and practical lessons that help the organisation reduce the likelihood and impact of similar incidents in the future.
Next Step
Digital evidence can disappear quickly, particularly when an affected system remains active or recovery work has already begun.
Contact CA for an initial consultation. We will help you define the investigation, preserve relevant evidence, establish what happened, and identify the actions required to protect the organisation.