The GIAC Cloud Forensics Responder (GCFR) certification is designed for professionals who want to demonstrate their ability to track and respond to incidents in cloud environments. This exam covers major cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. GCFR-certified individuals are proficient in log collection, interpretation, and forensic investigations in rapidly changing cloud environments. The certification covers various aspects, including log management, identification of malicious activity, data extraction, and more.
The GCFR certification exam consists of 82 questions to be completed in 3 hours, with a passing score of at least 62%. No specific training is required, and practical experience, books, or relevant courses can serve as preparation. The exam is proctored, and candidates can choose between remote proctoring through ProctorU or onsite proctoring through PearsonVUE.
The certification objectives cover topics like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform logging and architecture, cloud forensic artifact techniques, cloud storage platforms, virtual machine architecture, cloud-based attacks, in-cloud investigations, and more.
GIAC offers a practical testing environment called CyberLive, where candidates can demonstrate their hands-on skills using actual programs, code, and virtual machines to prove their knowledge and abilities in a real-world setting.
Overall, GCFR is a valuable certification for incident response team members, SOC analysts, threat hunters, law enforcement professionals, and experienced digital forensic analysts who want to excel in cloud forensics and incident response across major cloud platforms. Affiliate training and additional resources are available to help candidates prepare for the exam.
Difficulty: 2 out of 5.
I'm coming into this cloud forensics course with a background as a SOC analyst and lead with experience working in SIEMs, EDRs, and network appliances. I did not have experience in cloud investigations or any certs for the major vendors (AWS, Azure, GCP) prior to this call.
Overall, the course was very well structured over the five books - Microsoft 365 and Graph API, Azure, AWS, Google Workspace, and GCP. The services and features for the different providers are pretty similar with slight naming conventions and what the information that logs provide by default. IAM and how permissions are assigned to users, organizations, folders, groups, etc. are important for conducting investigations and I appreciate SANS going into the annoying details.
The labs leverage SOF-ELK which seems to be a standard for most SANS courses. Although each individual and organization will have their SIEM-of-choice to conduct investigations, the fundamentals of what to look for and how to find it are very applicable. I had an investigation in another cloud provider that wasn't covered by the class, and the methods to look for API creation, listing of keys, hunting for persistence were more or less the same.
I took the OnDemand version of the class and had plenty of time to rewatch the videos and build out my index for the exam. That being said, I didn't do the Day 6 CTF due to other priorities.
