Inproceedings
Current Challenges and Future Research Areas for Digital Forensic Investigation
Contribution Summary
The paper examines the current challenges in digital forensic investigations, including the digital evidence backlog, and identifies future research areas to improve the process. The authors discuss the increasing complexity, diversity, and volume of digital evidence, as well as the need for standardization and automation in digital forensic tools and processes. They highlight the importance of addressing the challenges posed by cloud-based services, Internet of Things devices, and antiforensic techniques. The authors also discuss the need for infrastructure improvements, including automation of device acquisition and analysis, Forensics-as-a-Service, and cross-jurisdictional evidence sharing. The paper concludes by outlining a number of future research topics that could greatly contribute to a more efficient digital forensic process.
Keywords: Digital Evidence Backlog; Digital Forensic Challenges; Future Research Topics; Cloud Forensics; Internet of Things; Antiforensic Techniques; Digital Forensic Tools; Automation
Abstract
Given the ever-increasing prevalence of technology in modern life, there is a corresponding increase in the likelihood of digital devices being pertinent to a criminal investigation or civil litigation. As a direct consequence, the number of investigations requiring digital forensic expertise is resulting in huge digital evidence backlogs being encountered by law enforcement agencies throughout the world. It can be anticipated that the number of cases requiring digital forensic analysis will greatly increase in the future. It is also likely that each case will require the analysis of an increasing number of devices including computers, smartphones, tablets, cloud-based services, Internet of Things devices, wearables, etc. The variety of new digital evidence sources pose new and challenging problems for the digital investigator from an identification, acquisition, storage and analysis perspective. This paper explores the current challenges contributing to the backlog in digital forensics from a technical standpoint and outlines a number of future research topics that could greatly contribute to a more efficient digital forensic process.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{lillis2016challenges,
author="David Lillis and Brett Becker and Tadhg O'Sullivan and Mark Scanlon",
title="{Current Challenges and Future Research Areas for Digital Forensic Investigation}",
booktitle="{The 11th ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law (CDFSL 2016)}",
year=2016,
month=05,
address={Daytona Beach, FL, USA},
publisher={ADFSL},
pages={9--20},
abstract="Given the ever-increasing prevalence of technology in modern life, there is a corresponding increase in the likelihood of digital devices being pertinent to a criminal investigation or civil litigation. As a direct consequence, the number of investigations requiring digital forensic expertise is resulting in huge digital evidence backlogs being encountered by law enforcement agencies throughout the world. It can be anticipated that the number of cases requiring digital forensic analysis will greatly increase in the future. It is also likely that each case will require the analysis of an increasing number of devices including computers, smartphones, tablets, cloud-based services, Internet of Things devices, wearables, etc. The variety of new digital evidence sources pose new and challenging problems for the digital investigator from an identification, acquisition, storage and analysis perspective. This paper explores the current challenges contributing to the backlog in digital forensics from a technical standpoint and outlines a number of future research topics that could greatly contribute to a more efficient digital forensic process.",
doi={10.13140/RG.2.2.34898.76489},
}