2023 State of Enterprise Digital Forensics & Incident Response Report

450+

DFIR Respondents

Magnet Forensics surveyed 492 corporate DFIR professionals in North America and EMEA to provide intelligence tailored to the needs of enterprise decision-makers.

What Our Research Revealed

Digital Forensics is Increasingly About Incident Response

Automation Isn’t a Luxury — It’s a Necessity

DFIR Leadership Has Never Been More Important

FINDING 1

Digital Forensics is Increasingly About Incident Response

As cyberattacks become more sophisticated and frequent, DFIR professionals are playing an increasingly important role in responding and investigating cyber incidents.

“The increasing sophistication of attacker TTPs requires an increasingly sophisticated response. As organizational defenders, incident responders and forensic investigators are working together to uncover the root cause of incidents in order to harden their environments and improve their security controls.”

Dean Turner,
Vice President, Product Management, Private Sector

42%

of DFIR professionals report that evolving cyberattack techniques are either a large or extreme problem for investigations.

FINDING 2

Automation Isn’t a Luxury — It’s a Necessity

Recruiting, hiring, and onboarding DFIR professionals is a major challenge, so replacing burnt-out team members or expanding the team to share the load isn’t a simple proposition.

45%

of respondents regard the growing volume of investigations and data as either an extreme (13%) or large (32%) problem.

54%

of DFIR professionals are feeling burnt out.

64%

agreed that alert/investigation fatigue is a contributor.

Free up in-house expertise and accelerate investigations by automating DFIR tasks that are today executed manually.

Automation is necessary to increase the scale and efficiency of forensic investigations, by preventing burnout of repetitive tasks and to keep pace with rising demands. While security automation is in place in many organizations, forensic automation, is not as common.

50%+

DFIR professionals indicate that investments in automation would be highly or extremely valuable for a range of DFIR functions.

FINDING 3

DFIR Leadership Has Never Been More Important

DFIR leaders have a real opportunity now to shape the future of their labs. Discover how the lack of a cohesive IR plan, changing and new cybersecurity regulations, and incorporating service providers into your DFIR strategy are impacting DFIR professionals.

Organizations need effective incident response plans that specify the role of digital forensics at the same time, leaders need to ensure DFIR practitioners are equipped with the resources and privileges they need to perform their roles.

35%

of respondents indicated a lack of a cohesive IR strategy is either an extreme (10%) or large (27%) contributor to wasted resources.

GET ALL THE INSIGHTS

2023 State of Enterprise DFIR

Gain access to the insights from our recent survey of 492 digital forensic and incident response (DFIR) professionals and discover the top 2023 priorities, objectives, challenges, and concerns.

Download full report