Large Data Analysis

Executive Summary: As digital media becomes readably accessible and cheaper, the average system size is steadily increases. Because of the increased capabilities of both digital investigators and of cyber criminals, we see two major trends that have been emerging when looking at the cyber crimes like child pornography, identity theft, and computer fraud. First, the types of crimes have become more and more complex. Secondly, the crimes are becoming more expensive to analyze. Because of the plethora and differentiation of cyber cases, the shear volume of cases can range anywhere from gigabytes to terabytes of data. This data is no longer limited to a single computer, rather now we see entire networks that are vulnerable to attack. Because these issues are so important, I am going to discuss several key issues involving large-scale data analysis facing today's world. This document will discuss: • The importance of large system analysis to the digital forensics field • The current practices to analyze these data sets • The technological gaps that exist in the analysis • The current research that is being done to address these issues • The ways that the current practices can be remedied today • The future of this technology