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.
