A State-of-the-Art Review of Cloud Forensics

Cloud computing and digital forensics are emerging fields of technology. Unlike traditional digital forensics where the target environment can be almost completely isolated, acquired and can be under the investigators control; in cloud environments, the distribution of computation and storage poses unique and complex challenges to the investigators. Recently, the term “cloud forensics” has an increasing presence in the field of digital forensics. In this state-of-the-art review, we included the most recent research efforts that used “cloud forensics” as a keyword and then classify the literature into three dimensions: (1) survey-based, (2) technology-based and (3) forensics-procedural-based. We discuss widely accepted standard bodies and their efforts to address the current trend of cloud forensics. Our aim is not only to reference related work based on the discussed dimensions, but also to analyse them and generate a mind map that will help in identifying research gaps. Finally, we summarize existing digital forensics tools and the available simulation environments that can be used for evidence acquisition, examination and cloud forensics test purposes.