Chain of custody in Cybersecurity - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Understanding Chain of Custody in Cybersecurity

📖 Scenario: You are part of a cybersecurity team investigating a data breach. To ensure the evidence is valid and trustworthy, you need to understand and document the chain of custody for digital evidence collected during the investigation.

🎯 Goal: Build a clear step-by-step record of the chain of custody process that shows how digital evidence is collected, handled, and preserved securely.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list called evidence_items with exact digital evidence names

Add a variable custody_log to record who handled the evidence

Use a loop to add entries to custody_log showing evidence transfer details

Add a final confirmation step to mark the evidence as secured

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Chain of custody is used in cybersecurity to ensure digital evidence is collected, handled, and stored properly so it can be trusted in investigations and court.

💼 Career

Understanding chain of custody is essential for cybersecurity professionals, digital forensic analysts, and incident responders to maintain evidence integrity.

1

Set up the list of digital evidence

Create a list called evidence_items containing these exact items: 'USB Drive', 'Server Logs', 'Email Archive'.

Cybersecurity

# Create the list of evidence items
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets [] to create a list and separate items with commas.

2

Create the custody log variable

Create an empty list called custody_log to record the chain of custody entries.

Cybersecurity

evidence_items = ['USB Drive', 'Server Logs', 'Email Archive']
# Create an empty custody_log list
# Your code here

Need a hint?

An empty list is created with square brackets [] and assigned to the variable.

3

Record custody entries for each evidence item

Use a for loop with variable item to go through evidence_items. For each item, add a string to custody_log in this exact format: "Collected: {item} by Investigator A".

Cybersecurity

evidence_items = ['USB Drive', 'Server Logs', 'Email Archive']
custody_log = []
# Add custody log entries for each evidence item
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a for loop and the append() method to add formatted strings to the list.

4

Add final confirmation of evidence security

Add one more string to custody_log exactly as "All evidence secured in evidence room" to mark the end of the chain of custody.

Cybersecurity

evidence_items = ['USB Drive', 'Server Logs', 'Email Archive']
custody_log = []
for item in evidence_items:
    custody_log.append(f"Collected: {item} by Investigator A")
# Add final confirmation entry
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the append() method to add the final confirmation string to the list.