Cyber Investigation Services for Unparalleled Protection

A Group-IB cyber investigation moves from the incident to the people responsible in five stages:
1. A preliminary assessment checks whether the available data can realistically lead to an identification, and in which jurisdiction a case is viable.
2. Investigators collect and document evidence from your systems and from external sources.
3. They trace attacker infrastructure, accounts, and cryptocurrency flows, drawing on Group-IB threat intelligence and dark web data.
4. The findings become a referral package for law enforcement. It identifies the suspects and lists the legal requests only police can make, such as subscriber or exchange records.
5. Group-IB supports the police and prosecutors as the case proceeds and can give testimony in court.

Many investigations also run as part of joint operations led by law enforcement agencies.

Group-IB investigates most high-tech crimes that leave a digital trail. Fraud cases include phishing, business email compromise, account takeover, and cryptocurrency theft.

Investigators handle ransomware and other malware attacks. Data leaks and insider cases are in scope, including suspected competitive espionage. We also cover brand abuse, counterfeiting, extortion, investment scams, and cybercrime-as-a-service platforms.

An organization needs a cyber investigation when it must identify the attacker and act on the findings. Typical signals include repeated attacks by the same actor and fraud losses that point to an organized group.

Stolen data offered on underground forums is another common reason. Legal teams often need independent findings before filing a police report or starting legal action. Insurers and regulators may also require a documented account of the incident.

When an attack is still active, containment comes first, followed by investigation. In that case, the starting point is Group-IB Incident Response Services, which stops the intrusion and preserves the evidence a later investigation depends on.

Investigators collect digital data that shows how a crime happened and who committed it. Internal sources include system and network logs, email headers, malware samples, and disk or memory images.

External evidence covers phishing domains, hosting and registration records, attacker accounts on forums and messaging apps, and blockchain transactions traced to exchanges and other cash-out points. Group-IB captures each item, hashes it, and timestamps it, and documents the method so law enforcement can reproduce it.

Investigators use only lawfully obtainable sources and do not access attacker systems or accounts without authorization. Group-IB Digital Forensics Services runs device-level analysis.

A cyber investigation can identify the attacker in many cases, but no investigator can promise it upfront. There are three distinct levels: linking the attack to a known group or online alias, identifying the real person behind it, and an arrest.

The first two depend on evidence quality, the attacker’s operational mistakes, and whether money passed through identity-verification services.

An arrest depends on law enforcement and on the suspect’s location. Even without an arrest, investigations often lead to infrastructure takedowns, seized assets, or indictments that disrupt the threat actors’ group.

The length of a cyber investigation depends on its scope and the evidence available, so we estimate each case individually. Group-IB’s own benchmark is a minimum of 60 working hours across four stages: 

• Preliminary analysis to size the damage and assess the chance of identifying the threat actor (4 hours or more), 
• Assistance with containment (8 hours or more), 
• The full investigation to attribute the attack and build a threat actor profile (40 hours or more), and 
• Post-investigation support with law enforcement and court testimony (8 hours or more).

A contained case with well-preserved logs can move quickly, while cases that cross borders or involve several threat actors take longer. Prosecution follows police and court timelines, which no provider can control. International cases can run for years.

Cost depends on the scope agreed for each case and can increase with the number of systems, countries, and suspects involved. Large evidence volumes and court testimony add to the effort. Organizations facing repeated attacks can buy a set number of investigation hours through the Group-IB Cyber Investigation Subscription. For a scoped proposal, share the case details with the Group-IB High-Tech Crime Investigations team.

Group-IB combines cybersecurity investigators with an industry-leading Threat Intelligence Platform and in-house tools to trace infrastructure and cryptocurrency, an approach CEO Dmitry Volkov calls adversary-centric intelligence. The team has conducted more than  1,600 high-tech crime investigations across more than 60 countries. Regional Digital Crime Resistance Centers add local language, legal, and law enforcement contacts.

Group-IB also works directly with law enforcement and contributes intelligence to joint operations with INTERPOL, Europol, and AFRIPOL that have led to arrests and infrastructure takedowns. Recent operations in 2026 include:

• Operation Serengeti III with INTERPOL
• Operation KillSwitch with Europol and Eurojust
• Operation Ramz with INTERPOL
• SniperDz investigation with INTERPOL and Algerian authorities

Contact the Group-IB High-Tech Crime Investigations team through the form on this page or talk to a representative. Describe what happened and when the incident was discovered. Until investigators advise you:

• Keep logs and affected devices unchanged;
• Save all communication with the attacker, and do not reply, warn them, or pay.

The team then runs a preliminary assessment and proposes a scope. Organizations facing an active attack can reach Group-IB around the clock through the Report an incident hotline.

Yes, Group-IB prepares findings for use by law enforcement and courts. Group-IB hashes and timestamps each item of evidence and documents its methods so police and court experts can verify and reproduce the results.

Where local procedure allows, Group-IB cyber investigators can testify as witnesses or experts. Each court decides admissibility under its own rules, so legal teams should confirm evidence requirements with counsel early in the case.

Yes. Group-IB signs a non-disclosure agreement before sharing any sensitive data, and only the investigators assigned to the case can access client data.