A Review of Technical Problems when Conducting an Investigation in Cloud Based Environments

Cloud computing is a relatively new technology which is quickly becoming one of the most important technological advances for computer science. This technology has had a significant growth in recent years. It is now more affordable and cloud platforms are becoming more stable. Businesses are successfully migrating their systems to a cloud infrastructure, obtaining technological and economic benefits. However, others still remain reluctant to do it due to both security concerns and the loss of control over their infrastructures and data that the migration entails. At the same time that new technologies progress, its benefits appeal to criminals too. They can not only steal data from clouds, but they can also hide data in clouds, which has provoked an increased in the number of cybercrimes and their economic impacts. Their victims range from children and adults to companies and even countries. On the other hand, digital forensics have negatively suffered the impact of the boom of cloud computing due to its dynamic nature. The tools and procedures that were successfully proved and used in digital investigations are now becoming irrelevant, making it an urging necessity to develop new forensics capabilities for conducting an investigation in this new environment. As a consequence of these needs a new area has emerged, Cloud Forensics, which is the result of the intersection between cloud computing and digital forensics. Keywords: Cloud forensics, cloud computing, forensics investigation, forensic challenges.