Calm Before the Storm: The Challenges of Cloud Computing in Digital Forensics

TL;DR

This paper discusses the challenges cloud computing poses to digital forensics, highlighting how traditional procedures are invalidated and identifying new research challenges in this evolving environment.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of how cloud computing impacts digital forensic practices and outlines key research challenges for adapting forensic procedures.

Findings

Traditional forensic procedures are invalidated in cloud environments.

Cloud computing introduces significant new challenges for digital investigations.

The paper identifies specific research areas needed to address these challenges.

Abstract

Cloud computing is a rapidly evolving information technology (IT) phenomenon. Rather than procure, deploy and manage a physical IT infrastructure to host their software applications, organizations are increasingly deploying their infrastructure into remote, virtualized environments, often hosted and managed by third parties. This development has significant implications for digital forensic investigators, equipment vendors, law enforcement, as well as corporate compliance and audit departments (among others). Much of digital forensic practice assumes careful control and management of IT assets (particularly data storage) during the conduct of an investigation. This paper summarises the key aspects of cloud computing and analyses how established digital forensic procedures will be invalidated in this new environment. Several new research challenges addressing this changing context are also identified and discussed.