A Survey of Cloud Computing Challenges from a Digital Forensics Perspective

Computing and communication technologies have merged to produce an environment where many applications and their associated data reside in remote locations, often unknown to the users. The adoption of cloud computing promises many benefits to users and service providers, as it shifts users’ concerns away from the physical location of system components and toward the accessibility of the system’s services. While this adoption of cloud computing may be beneficial to users and service providers, it increases areas of concern for computer forensic examiners that need to obtain data from cloud computing environments for evidence in legal matters. The authors present an overview of cloud computing, discuss the challenges it raises from a digital forensics perspective, describe suitable tools for forensic analysis of cloud computing environments, and consider the future of cloud computing.