Data Breach Response Services in Raleigh, NC

The first hours after breach discovery determine whether an incident remains a contained security event or escalates into a business-threatening catastrophe. Our containment protocol begins with network segmentation to isolate affected systems from the broader environment. We deploy forensic imaging tools that capture volatile memory, running processes, network connections, and system state before any evidence degrades. For Raleigh organizations with hybrid cloud environments spanning on-premises data centers and AWS, Azure, or GCP deployments, our team simultaneously captures cloud-native artifacts including CloudTrail logs, VPC flow logs, and container runtime data.

Forensic triage rapidly determines the scope of compromise. We examine authentication logs to identify unauthorized access, review file-system timestamps to map attacker activity, analyze malware samples in isolated sandboxes, and correlate indicators of compromise across endpoint detection platforms. Our AI-powered log correlation engine processes millions of events to construct an attack timeline that would take human analysts days to assemble manually. This accelerated triage gives your leadership team the answers they need to make informed decisions about notification obligations, public communications, and business continuity within the first twenty-four hours.

For Raleigh healthcare providers subject to HIPAA, we specifically identify whether electronic protected health information was accessed or exfiltrated, enabling your compliance team to determine whether the HIPAA breach notification rule's sixty-day clock has been triggered. For defense contractors handling CUI, we assess whether CMMC incident-reporting requirements apply and prepare the documentation required for DIBCAC notification.

NCGS 75-65 requires notification without unreasonable delay, including a description of the incident, the types of personal information involved, remedial steps taken, credit-bureau contact information, and NC Attorney General contact details. When more than 1,000 residents are affected, you must also notify the Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division and three nationwide consumer-reporting agencies.

Our team manages the entire notification workflow: drafting legally compliant letters reviewed by your counsel, coordinating credit-monitoring vendors, printing and mailing notices, establishing call centers, and filing regulatory reports.

We also navigate the intersection of NC state law with federal requirements. HIPAA imposes a separate sixty-day timeline. Defense contractors face DFARS 252.204-7012 reporting. Financial institutions answer to GLBA interagency guidance. Our team ensures you satisfy all obligations simultaneously.

Our Licensed Digital Forensic Examiners reconstruct the complete attack narrative: initial access, privilege escalation, lateral movement, persistence mechanisms, data staging, and exfiltration channels. This timeline identifies every compromised system and dataset for notification scoping, provides court-admissible evidence for litigation, and reveals the security gaps that must be remediated.

Our Raleigh forensic lab uses write-blockers for disk forensics, captures memory dumps from live systems, preserves network packet captures, and extracts cloud artifacts from API logs. Every artifact is documented with cryptographic hash verification and chain-of-custody records meeting North Carolina court evidentiary standards.

Craig Petronella serves as an expert witness in cybercrime cases for law firms across North Carolina, bridging the gap between technical investigation and legal strategy. Our reports are written for judges, juries, insurance adjusters, and regulators who need clear, defensible conclusions.

Modern ransomware groups practice double extortion, encrypting systems while exfiltrating data to pressure payment. Our response addresses both vectors: isolating affected systems, identifying the variant, checking decryption-key databases, and restoring from verified clean backups. Simultaneously, we investigate what data was exfiltrated and determine notification obligations.

For Raleigh healthcare organizations, ransomware encrypting electronic health records creates immediate patient-safety concerns. We prioritize clinical system restoration and navigate HHS reporting requirements. HIPAA's ransomware guidance presumes a breach when ePHI is encrypted, placing the burden on covered entities to demonstrate otherwise through forensic evidence.

Our Raleigh facility includes air-gapped backup verification and clean-room rebuild environments. We rebuild from known-clean images, apply hardened configurations, validate data integrity, and conduct threat-hunting sweeps before reconnecting to production.

Understanding who attacked you and how they operate is critical for effective defense. Our threat-intelligence team leverages machine learning models trained on global attack data to correlate indicators of compromise from your environment with known threat-actor campaigns. This attribution analysis identifies whether you were targeted by a nation-state group, a financially motivated criminal organization, a ransomware-as-a-service affiliate, or an opportunistic attacker exploiting a recently disclosed vulnerability.

Attribution informs response strategy. Nation-state actors targeting Raleigh defense contractors or government agencies often maintain persistent access through multiple backdoors; our threat-hunting team systematically identifies and eliminates every persistence mechanism. Financially motivated groups typically move faster but leave more forensic artifacts; our AI-driven analysis rapidly maps their lateral movement. Ransomware affiliates follow predictable playbooks that our team has documented across hundreds of engagements, allowing us to anticipate their next move and cut off exfiltration before the threat actor can leverage stolen data.

We share anonymized threat intelligence with law-enforcement partners including the FBI's Raleigh field office, the NC State Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Crime Unit, and sector-specific Information Sharing and Analysis Centers. This collaboration strengthens the broader security community while providing your organization with intelligence feeds that improve your ongoing defenses. Our AI-powered services platform continuously ingests these feeds to update detection signatures and behavioral models in real time.

Without comprehensive remediation, the same vulnerabilities remain available for exploitation. Our post-breach program addresses every gap identified during investigation: network segmentation to limit lateral movement, endpoint detection and response deployment, Active Directory hardening, vulnerability remediation, and enhanced monitoring to detect future incidents faster.

For regulated Raleigh organizations, remediation must satisfy examiner expectations. HIPAA-covered entities face HHS OCR corrective action plans. Financial institutions face examiner scrutiny. Government contractors must demonstrate gap closure to contracting officers. We build documentation that satisfies regulators while delivering genuine security improvement.

Our hardening program includes security awareness training, tabletop exercises simulating realistic breach scenarios, updated incident-response plans incorporating lessons learned, and ongoing monitoring through our managed security operations center.