What is Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR)?

What is Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR)?

It is the practice of investigating and responding to a cyber incident simultaneously. It combines two disciplines:

• Digital forensics (DF): The process of identifying, collecting, examining, and analyzing digital data while keeping it unaltered. Investigators document every person who handles the evidence in a record known as the chain of custody. Organizations commission digital forensics services after breaches, insider cases, and fraud, where findings often need to hold up with regulators or in court.
• Incident response (IR): The structured process of detecting a cybersecurity incident, containing it, removing the attacker, and restoring normal operations. NIST treats an incident as anything that harms, or threatens to harm, the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of a system (the “CIA triad”), along with violations of security policy. Teams without in-house capacity typically bring in incident response services to lead or support this work.

DFIR combines these two practices because they often depend on each other. Responders need to stop an attack quickly, but actions such as rebooting or reimaging a machine can erase evidence stored only in memory or in logs that overwrite themselves. 

Investigators therefore collect that evidence before or during containment. Their findings then tell responders which accounts and systems the attacker controls, so containment covers the full scope of the intrusion. Investigators often map those findings to the MITRE ATT&CK® framework, a public knowledge base of attacker tactics and techniques, to reconstruct the intrusion step by step.

What are the Key Components of DFIR?

The key components of DFIR are digital forensics, incident response, threat intelligence, malware analysis, and incident investigation. Digital forensics and incident response are the two core disciplines, while the other three components support them. Together, these components help investigators understand who is likely behind an attack, what the attacker’s tools do, and how the incident unfolded.

Digital forensics

In a DFIR engagement, digital forensics involves evidence handling. Investigators collect data from the affected environment, preserve it, and examine it for traces of attacker activity. Typical sources include memory, disk images, system and application logs, endpoint detection and response (EDR) telemetry, and cloud and SaaS audit logs.

Investigators collect evidence in the order it is likely to disappear, a practice known as the ‘order of volatility’. Data in a computer’s memory, such as running processes and open network connections, is lost when the machine shuts down or reboots, so investigators capture it first. Data on disk lasts longer and comes next. 

Cloud and SaaS logs are also time-sensitive because providers delete them after a set retention period, so investigators export them early.

Incident response

Incident response is the operational side of DFIR. Responders decide how to contain the attack, carry out the containment, remove the attacker’s access, and restore systems to normal operation.

Most of these decisions involve trade-offs. Disconnecting a system stops the attacker’s activity, but it can also halt a business process. Acting before the full scope is known can alert the attacker while other footholds remain. Responders rely on forensic findings to decide when and where to act.

Incident response also covers coordination beyond the technical team. Responders keep leadership informed, work with legal counsel and communications staff, and gather the information needed for regulatory notifications and insurance claims, often under tight deadlines.

Threat intelligence

Threat intelligence is information about threat actors, the infrastructure they use, and how they operate. In DFIR, investigators compare the artifacts they find, such as IP addresses, domains, and file hashes (unique fingerprints of a file), with what is already known about active threat groups.

A match tells investigators what else to look for. If the artifacts point to a ransomware group that usually steals data before encrypting it, investigators know to search for signs of data theft and for the tools that group typically uses to stay in a network. Threat intelligence can also show whether stolen data or credentials have appeared on dark web forums or leak sites, helping the organization assess the breach’s impact.

Group-IB’s Threat Intelligence Platform monitors threat actor infrastructure and dark web sources, so investigators can check incident artifacts against known campaigns.

Malware analysis

Malware analysis examines malicious files found during an investigation to determine what they do. Analysts usually combine three methods:

• Static analysis: Examining a file without running it, for example by reviewing its code, embedded text, and the system functions it calls.
• Dynamic analysis: Running the file in an isolated test environment, called a sandbox, and recording what it does, such as the files it creates and the servers it contacts.
• Reverse engineering: Converting the compiled program back into readable instructions to understand capabilities that do not show up in a sandbox, such as encryption routines or hidden commands.

The results give investigators indicators of compromise (IOCs), such as file hashes, domains, and IP addresses. Teams search the environment for these and block them. Analysis can also show whether the malware steals data and how it survives a reboot. In some ransomware cases, it shows whether encrypted files can be recovered.

Incident investigation

Incident investigation helps investigators draw conclusions about the incident as a whole. While digital forensics focuses on collecting and examining evidence correctly, incident investigation uses that evidence, together with threat intelligence and malware analysis results, to answer the organization’s questions.

The investigation establishes how the attacker got in, when the intrusion started, which systems and accounts they reached, what data they accessed or took, and whether they still have access. Investigators build these answers into an attack timeline, which guides major decisions such as which systems to rebuild and whether to report the breach.

Where the evidence allows, the investigation may also link the activity to a known threat group. Investigators usually state this attribution with a level of confidence rather than as certain fact.

What Are the Different Types of Digital Forensics?

Digital forensics is usually divided by the kind of system the evidence comes from. The main types are computer, network, cloud, mobile device, and email forensics. Most incidents involve more than one type, because attackers rarely stay on a single system.

Computer forensics

Computer forensics covers laptops, desktops, and servers. Investigators examine disk images, memory captures, file system records, and operating system logs. On Windows systems, sources such as the registry and event logs show which programs ran, which accounts signed in, and which USB devices were connected.

Memory analysis matters because some malware runs only in memory and leaves little or nothing on disk. Disk analysis can recover deleted files and show when files were created or changed. Where the organization runs EDR tools, their recorded activity adds another source of evidence. Together, these sources let investigators build a detailed timeline of what happened on each machine.

Network forensics

Network forensics examines network traffic and the records that network devices keep. Sources include packet captures, flow records that summarize which systems communicated and how much data moved, and logs from firewalls, proxies, DNS servers, and VPNs. This evidence shows how an attacker moved between systems and which external servers they contacted.

Most traffic is now encrypted, so investigators often cannot read its contents. However, the metadata still shows which systems communicated and how much data they exchanged. That is often enough to spot an attacker’s remote-control traffic, known as command and control, or a large transfer of stolen data.

Network devices are also frequent targets. Attackers exploit firewalls, VPN gateways, and routers to get into a network, and many of these devices keep limited logs. 

Regulators and cybersecurity agencies are pushing back against the visibility gap. Cyber agencies in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have issued guidance for network device manufacturers, calling for forensic logging to be enabled by default. Published in February 2025, it remains the standing reference for what these devices should record. 

By February 2026, CISA’s Emergency Directive 26-03 required US federal agencies to collect forensic evidence from Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN systems and hunt for signs of compromise.

Cloud forensics

Cloud forensics investigates incidents in cloud infrastructure and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. Investigators typically lack physical access to the hardware. The main evidence is provider-recorded activity, such as sign-ins, configuration changes, data access, and API calls.

Cloud evidence has two common limits. Many logs are kept only for a set period, and some detailed logs exist only if the organization enabled them before the incident. Cloud resources such as virtual machines and containers can also be created and deleted within minutes, so investigators may need snapshots taken while the attack is still underway.

Many cloud intrusions start with stolen credentials or access tokens rather than malware. In September 2025, the FBI warned that criminal groups were stealing data from organizations’ Salesforce environments. In some cases, they used stolen OAuth tokens taken from a third-party integration. 

Investigating cases like this depends on identity provider logs and on records of which applications had access to which accounts.

Mobile device forensics

Mobile device forensics recovers evidence from smartphones and tablets, such as messages, call records, app data, photos, and location history. It is common in insider and fraud investigations, and when a device is suspected of carrying spyware.

Encryption is the main obstacle. Modern iOS and Android devices encrypt their storage by default, and how much data investigators can extract depends on the device and its software version. A locked, fully updated phone can be difficult to examine.

For company-owned devices, mobile device management (MDM) records add evidence, such as which apps were installed and when the device last connected. Personal devices used for work raise privacy and legal questions, so investigators need clear authority before examining them.

Email forensics

Email forensics investigates messages and mailboxes. It is most often used in phishing and business email compromise (BEC) cases, where attackers impersonate an executive or supplier to trick staff into sending money or data. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) recorded more than $3 billion in reported BEC losses in its 2025 Internet Crime Report.

Investigators start with the message headers. These record the servers a message passed through and the results of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC checks, which confirm whether a sender is allowed to use the domain it claims. Mailbox audit logs add what headers cannot show, such as who signed in to the mailbox, which messages they opened, and whether they created rules to forward or hide email. 

These logs often decide whether a BEC case is also a data breach, because they show whether the attacker read messages containing personal or sensitive data.

What Does Digital Forensics and Incident Response Include?

DFIR covers work before, during, and after a security incident. A typical DFIR practice includes five areas.

• Incident response and investigation: This is the work most people associate with DFIR. Investigators triage the incident, preserve evidence, support containment, and establish how the attacker got in and what they accessed.
• Compromise assessment: A structured search of an environment for signs of an undetected intrusion. Organizations commission one after a supplier breach, around an acquisition, or when an unexplained alert suggests an attacker may be present.
• Readiness assessment and exercises: A review of whether the organization’s response plan, logging, and tools would work during a real incident. Tabletop exercises let the team walk through a simulated incident and test decision-making and escalation. Many organizations also set up an incident response retainer in advance, which agrees on response times before an incident happens.
• Regulatory and legal support: Investigators document findings to support breach notifications to regulators and cyber insurance claims. When a case reaches court, they may also give expert witness testimony.
• Training and capability building: Courses and coaching that prepare internal teams to handle the first hours of an incident and collect evidence correctly before outside help arrives.

Why Do Organizations Need DFIR?

Organizations need DFIR because restoring systems after an attack does not show how the attacker got in, whether they still have access, or what data they took. Regulators and insurers also expect those answers quickly, with supporting evidence.

Safe recovery

Restoring from backup is a common response to ransomware, but backups do not remove stolen credentials, hidden backdoors, or the weakness the attacker first used, such as an unpatched VPN or a compromised supplier account. 

CISA’s #StopRansomware Guide advises responders to look for the attacker’s persistence mechanisms and confirm that systems are clean before rebuilding from backups. Without that investigation, an organization may restore systems that the attacker can still reach.

Regulatory reporting deadlines

Many organizations must report significant incidents within days or even hours, and those reports need facts about what happened and what was affected. DFIR helps organizations produce those facts. 

For most of the rules in Table 1, the first report is due within 72 hours or less. That is usually well before an investigation is complete, so organizations need to establish the basic facts, such as what was affected and whether data was taken, within the first day or two.

More requirements are on the way. In the US, a rule under the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act (CIRCIA) is in its final approval stage. Once it takes effect, critical infrastructure operators will need to report a substantial cyber incident within 72 hours and a ransom payment within 24 hours.

Breach notification

Notification duties often depend on details that only an investigation can establish, such as whether personal data was accessed and whose data it was. A ransomware attack that encrypted servers without touching customer records may require different notifications from one in which records were copied. Forensic evidence helps the organization notify the right people without over- or under-reporting.

Insurance and legal evidence

Cyber insurance claims typically require documentation of what happened and what it cost. Litigation, regulatory investigations, and internal disciplinary cases may also rely on the findings. Evidence collected with a documented chain of custody is more likely to be accepted than conclusions reconstructed after the fact.

What Is the DFIR Process?

The DFIR process is the sequence of steps an organization follows to prepare for an incident, detect it, investigate it, recover from it, and learn from it. The six steps below are a common practical model, though in a real incident they overlap and new findings often send the team back to an earlier step. NIST’s incident response guidance, SP 800-61 Rev. 3, organizes the same work around the six functions of its Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 instead of a fixed sequence.

Preparation

Preparation is the work done before an incident that decides how well the response goes. It typically includes the following.

• An incident response plan that names who leads the response, who can approve decisions such as taking systems offline, and when to involve legal counsel, insurers, and regulators.
• Playbooks for common scenarios, such as ransomware and business email compromise.
• Logging that is enabled, collected centrally, and retained long enough to investigate an intrusion that started months earlier. CISA and partner agencies set out best practices for event logging in August 2024.
• An agreement with an external DFIR provider, if the organization lacks in-house capacity.
• Tabletop exercises that test the plan before a real incident does.

Detection and identification

Detection starts when something signals a possible incident. Common triggers include alerts from security tools, staff reports, notices from law enforcement or a supplier, and ransom notes.

The team then confirms whether a real incident occurred, how serious it is, and which systems and accounts appear affected. This first assessment also matters for compliance. Many reporting deadlines start when the organization becomes aware of an incident, so the team should record when that happened and what it knew at the time.

Evidence collection and preservation

Responders capture evidence in the order it is likely to disappear, starting with volatile data such as memory and active network connections before moving to disk and stored logs. Each item is copied and recorded with who handled it and when, and the team works from the copies rather than the original media. This approach keeps the evidence intact if the case later reaches an insurer, a regulator, or a court.

Investigation and analysis

Investigators use the collected evidence to build a timeline of the intrusion, from initial access to any data theft. Malware analysis and threat intelligence add detail on the attacker’s tools and likely next steps.

Investigation does not stop once containment begins. A single new lead, such as a compromised account nobody knew about, can reveal more affected systems and send the team back to collect evidence. These findings decide what responders lock down next. They also tell the organization whether it has to notify regulators or the people whose data was exposed.

Containment, eradication, and recovery

These three steps remove the attacker and restore normal operations.

• Containment: Stopping the attack from spreading, for example by isolating infected hosts, disabling compromised accounts, revoking active sessions and access tokens, and blocking attacker infrastructure. Responders usually act on all known footholds at once, so the attacker cannot switch to another one.
• Eradication: Removing malware and the attacker’s persistence mechanisms, and closing the weakness they used to get in, such as an unpatched system or an exposed remote access service. CISA’s #StopRansomware Guide recommends resetting credentials after cleaning and rebuilding the environment.
• Recovery: Restore systems from clean backups or rebuild them, then monitor closely for signs the attacker has returned.

Post-incident review

After the incident, the team reviews what happened and what to change. The review usually produces a final report, updates to the response plan and playbooks, and new detection rules based on what the attacker did. Some regulations also require a final report to the authorities, such as the NIS2 report due one month after the incident notification. NIST’s 2025 guidance treats improvement as continuous, so teams can apply lessons during and after an incident.

What Evidence Can DFIR Investigate?

DFIR can investigate almost any data that records activity on a system, a network, or an account. Which evidence matters most depends on where the attack occurred and how quickly it disappears. 

Evidence is rarely complete. Logs may not have been enabled, or retention periods may have expired before anyone looked. Attackers also delete traces to cover their tracks. Investigators work around these gaps by checking one source against another. 

If an attacker cleared a server’s event logs, the same activity may still appear in EDR data, network records, or the identity provider’s sign-in logs. That is why logging and retention choices made during preparation often decide how much an investigation can prove.

Key Benefits of DFIR

The main benefits of DFIR are faster response, more accurate findings, lower business impact, stronger compliance, and fewer repeat incidents. Each one comes from basing decisions during and after an incident on evidence.

1. Faster incident response

Teams with DFIR capability in place can start work as soon as an incident is confirmed. Roles, tools, and outside support are agreed in advance, so teams don’t lose time arranging them while the attack is underway.

Forensic findings also make the response more precise. Responders can isolate the specific machines and accounts involved instead of shutting down whole networks as a precaution.

2. Accurate threat investigation

DFIR findings rest on evidence, not assumptions. Investigators can show how the attacker got in, which accounts and systems they used, and what data they accessed. Each finding can be traced to a specific log, file, or memory capture, so others can check it.

Accuracy matters because first impressions are often wrong. An incident that looks like one infected laptop can turn out to involve a compromised administrator account and several servers.

3. Reduced business impact

When investigators can show which systems the attacker did not touch, the organization can bring those systems back online sooner. Targeted containment also keeps more of the business running during the response.

Clear findings help the organization speak to customers, partners, and the media with facts instead of speculation. That helps limit reputational damage and avoids public statements that later need correction.

4. Stronger security and compliance

DFIR cyber security work produces the documentation that regulators and auditors ask for, including when an incident was detected, what was affected, and what the organization did about it. That record supports the reporting deadlines in Table 1 and any later audit or legal review.

Investigations also expose security gaps that routine testing may miss, such as accounts with more access than they need, systems never added to central logging, and remote access services without multi-factor authentication.

5. Prevention of future incidents

Each investigation shows how a real attacker got past the organization’s defenses. Fixing that weakness, for example by patching the exploited system or enforcing multi-factor authentication on the abused account, closes the same route for the next attacker.

The indicators and techniques found during the investigation also become new detection rules. Over time, the organization catches similar activity earlier and has fewer gaps for attackers to use.

Common DFIR Use Cases

DFIR is most often used to investigate ransomware, business email compromise, insider threats, cloud account takeovers, third-party breaches, and data leaks. Each case raises different questions and depends on different evidence.

• Ransomware: Many ransomware groups now steal data before they encrypt systems, then threaten to publish it. Group-IB’s High-Tech Crime Trends Report 2026 counted 1,062 attacks by Qilin in 2025, more than any other group, followed by Akira with 695. Investigators establish how the attackers got in, what they took, and whether they still have access. These answers decide whether backups are safe to restore and whether the incident must be reported as a data breach.
• Business email compromise: Investigators confirm how the attacker got into the mailbox, which other accounts they reached, and which messages they read or sent. When money has already been transferred, speed matters. The FBI advises victims to contact their bank immediately and ask it to contact the bank that received the transfer. It also asks victims to report the scam to IC3.
• Insider threats and intellectual property theft: Employees or contractors sometimes copy sensitive data before they leave or misuse their access for personal gain. Investigators reconstruct what the person accessed and where they sent it, such as a USB drive or a personal cloud storage account. These cases often lead to disciplinary action or litigation, so investigators must collect evidence discreetly and maintain a documented chain of custody.
• Cloud and SaaS account takeover: Attackers who steal passwords, session cookies, or access tokens can sign in as a legitimate user without installing malware. Investigators use identity provider and application audit logs to trace each sign-in and identify the data and connected applications the attacker accessed.
• Third-party and supply chain compromise: A breach at a software provider or managed service provider can give attackers a route into that supplier’s customers. The High-Tech Crime Trends Report describes supply chain attacks as a defining force in today’s threat landscape. In one 2025 case, a single stolen OAuth credential for the Salesloft Drift chatbot integration affected more than 700 organizations. When a supplier discloses a breach, DFIR determines whether the organization was affected and which systems and accounts the attacker could reach.
• Data leaks and extortion: When company data appears on a leak site or an attacker demands payment, investigators check whether the data is genuine, how it was taken, and how much was exposed. Threat intelligence can show where the data is being advertised. The findings support breach notifications and any cooperation with law enforcement.

What Tools and Technologies Are Used in DFIR?

DFIR tools primarily do three jobs; some collect evidence, some analyze it, and some bring the findings together so the team can act. Most DFIR teams combine commercial platforms with open-source tools, which are widely used, well documented, and free to inspect. 

Of the categories in Table 3, EDR and XDR platforms have become central to incident response. They let responders reach many machines at once without being physically present. 

Group-IB Managed XDR is one example. It lets responders isolate compromised hosts and collect forensic data remotely, so investigations can start while containment is underway.

Cloud and SaaS evidence does not appear in the table because most of it is held by the provider. Investigators usually work with each provider’s own audit logs and export features rather than with separate forensic software.

In a large incident, the evidence from all these tools also needs to come together in one place. A security information and event management (SIEM) system does this by collecting logs from across the organization and making them searchable. Security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) tools then automate routine response steps, such as disabling an account or blocking an address. CISA and its partners published guidance on implementing SIEM and SOAR platforms in May 2025.

Whichever tools a team uses, its findings are only as reliable as the way they are produced. Experienced investigators confirm important results with more than one tool and document each step, so another examiner can repeat the analysis and reach the same conclusion.

Emerging Trends in DFIR

DFIR is evolving alongside the threat landscape, and two changes drive most of it. Attackers now wield the same AI tools as defenders, and they increasingly rely on stolen valid credentials rather than dropping custom malware. Both tactics change what investigators look for and where they have to look, and incident response trends have followed suit.

AI on both sides of the investigation

Attackers use generative AI to scale social engineering. Group-IB’s High-Tech Crime Trends 2026 report describes AI-driven call-center platforms that pair internet telephony with text-to-speech to impersonate voices in real time, and the FBI has warned that criminals are circulating AI-generated videos that impersonate its own staff. On the defense side, AI helps sort large evidence sets and draft incident timelines, though an analyst still has to confirm the findings. NIST’s draft Cyber AI Profile treats AI-enabled defense and AI-enabled attacks as two halves of the same problem.

Identity as the new investigation target

More intrusions now begin with a valid login rather than a planted file. Group-IB reports that OAuth tokens, API keys, and service accounts are increasingly replacing malware as the entry point, and that stolen or fabricated identities lengthen the time an attacker stays undetected. For DFIR teams, this moves the investigation toward authentication records, token activity, and cloud audit logs, where a legitimate-looking session can hide an intruder.

Supply chain and open-source compromises

A single compromised vendor or software package can expose many organizations at once. In September 2025, the self-propagating Shai-Hulud worm spread through stolen maintainer tokens and infected more than 180 npm packages, a widely used set of open-source code libraries. Investigations like this reach beyond one network into the build pipelines and third-party components organizations depend on.

Forensics at the network edge

Firewalls, VPN gateways, and similar edge devices are common entry points, yet many retain little forensic data. Security agencies now press device makers to build in better logging so investigators can reconstruct what happened after a compromise.

Digital Forensics and Incident Response Best Practices

Strong DFIR depends on decisions made before an incident. Organizations that recover quickly have usually set their plan, logging, and roles in advance, so the response is a matter of following steps rather than inventing them under pressure. The practices below draw on established incident-handling guidance.

1. Prepare before an incident

Write the incident response plan while no one is under pressure, and name who does what. A plan should cover how incidents are classified, who has authority to take a system offline, and who speaks to regulators, customers, and the press. Keep contact details for legal counsel, your insurer, and any outside DFIR provider in the plan itself, not in an inbox you may lose access to during an attack.

2. Log the right data, and keep it long enough

An investigation can only use recorded evidence. Decide in advance which logs matter, including authentication, endpoint, network, and cloud audit trails, and set retention long enough to cover attacker dwell time, which often runs to weeks or months. Store a copy where an intruder who reaches your network cannot alter or delete it.

3. Preserve evidence correctly

Handle evidence so it holds up later, whether in court, an insurance claim, or a regulator’s review. Capture the most volatile data first, record who handled each item and when, and work from copies rather than the original media. A decision made in the first hour, such as pulling power from a machine, can destroy memory-based evidence that would otherwise explain the attack.

4. Practice the plan

A plan that has never been tested tends to fail on first use. Run tabletop exercises and simulations so the team finds the gaps, such as a missing contact, an unclear decision owner, or a log source no one was collecting, before a real incident does. Treat each exercise as a chance to correct the plan, not to grade the people.

5. Learn from every incident

Close each incident with a review that asks what happened, what worked, and what to change. Feed the answers back into detection rules, access controls, and the plan itself, so the same intrusion path is harder to use twice. This step turns a single incident into a lasting improvement in defenses.

How Do You Choose the Right DFIR Service Provider?

The right provider fits how your organization actually operates, not just the longest feature list. A few practical factors separate a partner that shortens an incident from one that adds friction when it matters most. Weigh the following when comparing options:

• Experience: Look for a provider that has handled incidents like the ones you are likely to face, in your industry and the regions where you operate. A team that has worked similar cases knows where attackers tend to hide and which evidence matters, so it wastes less time early in an investigation.
• Technology: Strong analysts still need strong tools. Without them, even an experienced team works slowly, and a longer incident usually costs more. Ask what visibility a provider brings beyond your own network, such as the ability to track stolen data or credentials on the dark web, since that reach often surfaces an intrusion sooner.
• Forensics and Investigation Capability: A provider should be able to recover and handle evidence properly and trace an incident back to how it started and who was behind it. That depth shapes the outcome, because containment and recovery depend on knowing what the attacker did and whether they still have a way back in.
• Process: Good providers deliver value at every stage, not only in a final report. Your team should leave the engagement knowing more than it did going in, with clearer coordination for the next incident.
• Communication: Findings are only useful if your team can act on them. A provider should explain what it sees in terms your staff understand, and give instructions your team can follow under pressure. Agree in advance who talks to whom and how often, so nothing stalls mid-incident.
• Response Speed: Ask how quickly a provider can start once you call, and get the commitment in writing. A retainer that guarantees a response time removes the scramble to find help after an attack has begun, when every hour counts toward the damage.

DFIR with Group-IB

A serious incident needs a response that contains the threat, removes it, and closes the gap that let it in. Group-IB’s intelligence-led incident response gives affected organizations professional emergency support 24/7, limiting both damage and downtime.

Since 2003, Group-IB has carried out more than 1,600 high-tech cybercrime investigations across over 60 countries, supported by 11 Digital Crime Resistance Centers worldwide that tailor the response to each client’s region and regulations. Its DFIR team handles ransomware, APT breaches, and a wide range of other threats across banking, manufacturing, energy, and government. Group-IB operates its own international CERT, CERT-GIB, and in 2026 was named a Representative Vendor in Gartner’s Market Guide for Cybersecurity Incident Response Retainer Services.

The team brings together digital forensics specialists, incident responders, malware reverse engineers, and threat intelligence analysts. Because the response starts from existing intelligence on the attacker, it skips the cold-start orientation that costs an organization critical hours early in an incident, while forensics specialists acquire evidence, build forensic images, and reconstruct how the attacker operated.

An engagement runs in three stages.

• Preparation. Group-IB helps deploy the right technology, build an incident response plan, train the team, and run tabletop exercises against realistic scenarios.
• During an incident. Specialists work to counter the attacker, build a remediation plan for the specific case, and guide the technical, legal, and communications teams to keep the response coordinated.
• After an incident. The team continues monitoring the network for any remaining threats and supports the legal and public-relations work that follows.

To understand the full scope of the DFIR services Group-IB offers or to seek immediate assistance with an incident, reach out to our experts here.