# Cybercrime Investigators are Users Too! Understanding the Socio-Technical Challenges Faced by Law Enforcement

## TL;DR

This paper explores the socio-technical challenges faced by cybercrime investigators through interviews, highlighting issues like system usability and collaboration, and proposes research directions for improved support tools and workflows.

## Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of investigators' practices and identifies key technical and social challenges, offering recommendations for future research and tool development.

## Key findings

- Investigator workflows face usability and system availability issues.
- Social and collaborative challenges hinder effective cybercrime investigation.
- Research areas for user-centric tools are identified.

## Abstract

Cybercrime investigators face numerous challenges when policing online crimes. Firstly, the methods and processes they use when dealing with traditional crimes do not necessarily apply in the cyber-world. Additionally, cyber criminals are usually technologically-aware and constantly adapting and developing new tools that allow them to stay ahead of law enforcement investigations. In order to provide adequate support for cybercrime investigators, there needs to be a better understanding of the challenges they face at both technical and socio-technical levels. In this paper, we investigate this problem through an analysis of current practices and workflows of investigators. We use interviews with experts from government and private sectors who investigate cybercrimes as our main data gathering process. From an analysis of the collected data, we identify several outstanding challenges faced by investigators. These pertain to practical, technical, and social issues such as systems availability, usability, and in computer-supported collaborative work. Importantly, we use our findings to highlight research areas where user-centric workflows and tools are desirable. We also define a set of recommendations that can aid in providing a better foundation for future research in the field and allow more effective combating of cybercrimes.