| | APRIL 2021ENTERPRISE SECURITY6The Evolving World of Digital ForensicsEditorialCopyright © 2021 ValleyMedia, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part of any text, photography or illustrations without written permission from the publisher is prohibited. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or illustrations. Views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the magazine and accordingly, no liability is assumed by the publisher thereof.Managing EditorRussell ThomasEditorial StaffAaron PierceAlex D'SouzaAva GarciaJustin S GonsalvesVisualizersRonald DonovanSalesAlena D'Souzaalena@enterprisesecuritymag.comEmail:sales@enterprisesecuritymag.comeditor@enterprisesecuritymag.commarketing@enterprisesecuritymag.com*Some of the Insights are based on the interviews with respective CIOs and CXOs to our editorial staffThe IT world is continually evolving. In the last few years, we have witnessed a shift in the device type: mobile devices have overtaken PCs, both in numbers and usage. Cloud-based applications and deployments have been surging in popularity. The latest round of cloud computing forecasts by leading IT companies and market research firms all show how rapidly cloud is, and will be, adopted in coming years.There are many reasons to this extra complexity in dealing with mobile digital forensics, or conducting forensics investigations in a cloud setup. The main ones have already been mentioned - namely, the large variety in design, dependent on the manufacturer or the service provider, in hardware and software, their type, functionality, underlying technologies, etc. These technologies are also continually evolving, as existing ones progress and new ones are being introduced, with short product cycles, which obviously make it very difficult for investigators to remain up-to-date with current technologies.It is hugely important for the forensics toolkits developer, as well as the forensics investigator, to develop and update their understanding of the way these new systems and components work, the features they possess, in addition to the appropriate methods and tasks to perform while dealing with them on a forensic basis. This is currently far from being straightforward.Standardization is another big challenge. In the mobile space, there have been attempts to bring together providers and device manufacturers, such as the WAC organization (Wholesale Applications Community), but it is currently more concerned by creating an open and unified platform and API for application developers. A set of standardized technologies, or guidelines, which would be adopted by manufacturers, will lower the cost and speed up the process of recovering data for investigations.The same applies to the cloud. There are, however, many standardization efforts, at various levels in the delivery of services and from different organizations. Although most of this is centered on removing fragmentation and lowering barriers to adoption of the clouds, there are still difficulties in bringing together the major players of the ecosystem to collaborate and define common approaches, processes, or metrics. Everybody is trying to extend and/or consolidate its reach in the market, and very few of them actually worry about defining standards. The on-going showdown `Amazon' vs. everybody else including OpenStack, Microsoft, Google, etc. shows how this promises to be hard to achieve.APRIL - 19 - 2021, Volume 07 - 04 Published by ValleyMedia, Inc.(ISSN 2691-4034) To subscribe to ENTERPRISE SECURITYVisit www.enterprisesecuritymag.com Russell Thomas Managing Editor russell@enterprisesecuritymag.comJoshua Parker
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