A survey of various frameworks and solutions in all branches of digital forensics with a focus on cloud forensics

Abstract

Digital forensics is a class of forensic science interested with the use of digital information produced, stored and transmitted by various digital devices as source of evidence in investigations and legal proceedings. Digital forensics can be split up to several classes such as computer forensics, network forensics, mobile forensics, cloud computing forensics, and IoT forensics. In recent years, cloud computing has emerged as a popular computing model in various areas of human life. However, cloud computing systems lack support for computer forensic investigations. The main goal of digital forensics is to prove the presence of a particular document in a given digital device. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of various frameworks and solutions in all classes of digital forensics with a focus on cloud forensics. We start by discussing different forensics classes, their frameworks, limitations and solutions. Then we focus on the methodological aspect and existing challenges of cloud forensics. Moreover, the detailed comparison discusses drawbacks, differences and similarities of several suggested cloud computing frameworks providing future research directions.