Optimization of Automation in a Digital Forensic Process Model

Abstract

The field of digital forensics has always been plagued by its inability to develop a compromise between the time taken and accuracy. In most solutions that were proposed to solve this problem, reduced time taken resulted in degraded accuracy and vice versa. Moreover, the helpful models lacked generality making it difficult to implement the same in different scenarios and those models that did provide generality offered little to no assistance in the practical phase of the investigation. Although automation was considered an obvious solution and solved some of the issues such as time and effort, it proved inconsistent when tested for accuracy in different phases. Different process models that vary in their use of automation and some that don’t automate at all are explored and documented in this paper. Furthermore, the paper recommends a process model that offers its own method of automation to tackle the challenges stated previously.