Cloud Forensics: State-of-the-Art and Research Challenges

Cloud computing is a new operation model providing utility services over a shared virtualized resources. It is visualized that in future, Cloud can offer everything as a service (EAAS). Cloud Service Provider (CSP) makes infrastructure, platform and software services available over the Internet with greater flexibility at a lower cost. Cloud computing paradigm enables users to access computing resources placed at a remote location. The users also need not necessarily own these physical infrastructures. As more and more service providers and users are getting added to the cloud environment, it has become an significant field attracting more attackers to perform malicious activities for financial gains. Several approaches of security are being considered in order to resolve these threats and provide protection for the resources so that the potential of cloud computing can be exploited to the maximum. Cloud forensics is an approach that attempts to investigate and analyze cloud security threats. It will ensure that attackers will be more cautious to avoid prosecution for their illegal actions. It acts as a deterrent, reducing network crime rate and improving security. The paper aims to provide a better awareness of cloud forensics, understand some of the proposed frameworks and identify the research gaps and challenges. The significance of this work is that it presents the state-of-the-art in cloud forensics, which will be very much useful for security practitioners and researchers.