Digital Forensics: Challenges and Opportunities for Future Studies

Reza Montasari, Richard Hill, Simon Parkinson, Pekka Peltola, Amin Hosseinian-Far, Alireza Daneshkhah

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Considering the ever-growing ubiquity of technology, there is an associated growth in the possibility of digital devices being related to a criminal investigation or civil litigation. GPS devices, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), wearables, smart home devices, vehicle data collectors and smart phones are just a few of the digital devices that can produce evidential information during investigations. As the variety of digital devices is increasing, the storage capacity of each is also rising exponentially. Due to the varied and large volumes of data produced by these devices, law enforcement agencies (LEAs) worldwide are facing a significant backlog of cases. This in turn has culminated in significant delays in dealing with cases that urgently require digital forensic investigations (DFIs).

Therefore, it is of paramount importance that new research approaches be adopted to address such challenges. To this end, this paper evaluates the existing set of circumstances surrounding the field of Digital Forensics (DF). Our research study makes two important contributions to the field of DF. First, it identifies and analyses the most important mid- and long-term challenges that need to be considered by LEAs. Second, it proposes important specific future research directions, the undertaking of which can assist LEAs in adopting a new approach to addressing these challenges.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)37-53
Number of pages17
JournalInternational Journal of Organizational and Collective Intelligence
Volume10
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2020

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