Digital Forensics and Automated Incident Response Framework Leveraging Big Data Analytics and Real Time Network Traffic Profiling in Heterogeneous Cyber Environments

The increasing complexity and scale of modern cybersecurity threats necessitate the development of advanced systems capable of efficiently detecting, analyzing, and mitigating incidents in real time. This paper proposes an automated framework for digital forensics and incident response that leverages big data analytics and real time network traffic profiling. The framework integrates cutting-edge technologies, including Apache Spark for real time data processing and Hadoop for scalable data storage, combined with machine learning models like LSTM and Autoencoders to detect anomalies and threats in network traffic. By automating the process of incident detection and response, this framework significantly reduces the time required to identify threats and improves the accuracy of forensic evidence correlation across heterogeneous network environments. The study highlights the advantages of using machine learning models and big data tools to address the limitations of traditional manual and semi-automated systems, which often struggle to keep pace with large-scale data generation. Testing results demonstrate that the proposed framework can handle large data volumes efficiently, providing real time, actionable insights with significantly reduced response times. Additionally, the framework improves forensic analysis by enabling the correlation of evidence from different devices and protocols, making it more effective than traditional methods in identifying the root cause of security incidents. However, challenges related to data heterogeneity, scalability, and system integration were encountered during testing. The proposed framework holds promise for significantly enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of cybersecurity operations, with future work focusing on further integration of advanced AI techniques and machine learning models for dynamic and adaptive incident response.