Evidence in the Cloud: Forensic Examination of Mobile Devices and Cloud Environments
Keywords:
Mobile Device Forensics, Cloud Forensics, Digital Evidence, Evidence Acquisition, Cloud ComputingAbstract
The digital forensic investigation landscape has changed dramatically due to the merging of digital forensics analysis with the cloud and smartphones, which has created multiple and distributed sources of digital evidence. This review will explore the forensic analysis of smartphone artefacts, cloud storage, synchronization information, metadata, and user accounts, which are the primary sources of digital evidence. It covers overview of the forensic investigation process, evidence collection methods on mobile devices and cloud platforms, and popular forensic tools. The review also examines the critical technical and legal issues, including encryption, data volatility, multi-tenancy, privacy regulations and cross-border jurisdiction. Finally, it introduces emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, forensic automation, blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT) forensics, zero-trust cloud security and cloud-native forensic frameworks. In the context of contemporary cybercrime landscape, the integration of mobile and cloud forensic methodologies is crucial to ensure successful and reliable digital investigations with legally sound results.
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