Which forensic readiness procedure aids in gathering information about system behavior?

Host monitoring is a crucial forensic readiness procedure that focuses on collecting and analyzing data related to the behavior of individual systems. This process involves observing system activities, such as file access, user logins, and process execution, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of how systems operate over time. By conducting host monitoring, an organization can gather useful information that can indicate unusual or suspicious behaviors, which are essential for incident detection and response.

Additionally, host monitoring sets the stage for responding effectively to security incidents by ensuring that relevant data is available for analysis when required. It enables forensic investigators to reconstruct events leading up to a security incident, thereby improving the overall security posture of an organization by allowing preventive measures to be implemented based on observed behaviors.

In contrast, other options like evidence assessment, risk assessment, and network monitoring, although important, serve different purposes. Evidence assessment focuses on evaluating collected data for its relevance and integrity, risk assessment identifies potential vulnerabilities or threats to the system without necessarily monitoring behavior, and network monitoring is centered around the traffic and data flow over the network rather than the behavior of individual systems. Therefore, host monitoring stands out as the key procedure for understanding system behavior effectively.