Taxonomy of challenges for digital forensics

Abstract

Since its inception, over a decade ago, the field of digital forensics has faced numerous challenges. Despite different researchers and digital forensic practitioners having studied and analysed various known digital forensic challenges, as of 2013, there still exists a need for a formal classification of these challenges. This paper, therefore, reviews existing research literature and highlights the various challenges that digital forensics has faced for the last ten years. In conducting this research study, however, it was difficult for the authors to review all the existing research literature in the digital forensic domain, hence, sampling and randomisation techniques were employed to facilitate the review of the gathered literature. Taxonomy of the various challenges is subsequently proposed in this paper based on our review of the literature. The taxonomy classifies the large number of digital forensic challenges into four welldefined and easily understood categories. The proposed taxonomy can be useful, for example, in future developments of automated digital forensic tools by explicitly describing processes and procedures that focus on addressing specific challenges identified in this paper. However, it should also be noted that the purpose of this paper is not to propose any solutions to the individual challenges that digital forensics face, but to serve as a survey of the state of the art of the research area.