Proper evidence handling starts the overall process that aims to determine the root cause of an incident and potentially identify the responsible party. For evidence to be of any use in an incident investigation, it has to be acquired in a sound manner. Incident responders should have a solid foundation in understanding the various types of acquisition and the tools and techniques that are available and apply those tools and techniques to the various situations that may arise. By applying solid techniques and properly documenting their actions, incident responders will be in a position to utilize the evidence to not only determine the root cause of an incident but also to back up their actions in a courtroom if necessary.

The next chapter will look at capturing non-volatile data, that is, data contained on the disk drive.