Toward a general ontology for digital forensic disciplines

Abstract

Ontologies are widely used in different disciplines as a technique for representing and reasoning about domain knowledge. However, despite the widespread ontology-related research activities and applications in different disciplines, the development of ontologies and ontology research activities are still wanting in digital forensic disciplines. This paper therefore presents the case for establishing an ontology for digital forensic disciplines. Such an ontology would enable better categorisation of digital forensic disciplines, as well as help with the development of methodologies that can offer direction in different areas of digital forensics, such as professional specialisation, certifications, development digital forensic tools, curricula and educational materials. In addition, the ontology presented in this paper can be used, for example, to better organise digital forensics domain knowledge and explicitly describe the discipline's semantics in a common way. Finally, this paper is meant to spark discussions and further research on an internationally agreed ontological distinction of the digital forensic disciplines. Digital forensic disciplines ontology is a novel approach towards organising the digital forensics domain knowledge and constitutes the main contribution of this paper.