thinQmaster Virtual testing partner Adaptive practice exams that find your weak spots and drill them. Every answer explained. From $69
Enroll

thinQmaster

Find your exam

Five questions free, before you decide.

Step 1 · choose a vendor

In one of our camps? Your practice exams come with the tuition — they are on your study page already.

Security Operations · Foundational

Order of Volatility

The sequence for collecting evidence from most to least volatile so short-lived data is not lost.

Definition

RFC 3227 lists CPU registers and cache; routing table, ARP cache, process table, kernel statistics and memory; temporary file systems; disk; remote logging and monitoring data; physical configuration and network topology; and archival media. Memory should be captured before powering down.

Example

Capturing RAM with a memory acquisition tool before imaging the hard drive.

Exam tip

Memory (RAM) before disk; disk before backups/archives. Pulling the plug first destroys volatile evidence.

Related terms