A Generic Digital Forensic Investigation Framework for Internet of Things (IoT)

Although numerous researches have been carried on Internet of Things (IoT), little focus has been employed on how Digital Forensics (DF) techniques can be used to conduct Digital Forensic Investigations (DFIs) in IoT-based infrastructures. Up to this point, IoT has not fully adapted to DF techniques owing to the fact that the current DF tools and procedures are not able to meet the heterogeneity and distributed nature of the IoT infrastructures. As a result, gathering, examining and analysing potential evidence from IoT environments that may be used as admissible evidence in a court of law poses a challenge to DF investigators and Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA). Therefore, the problem addressed is that, at the time of writing this paper, there currently exist no accepted DF frameworks that can help to conduct DFIs in an IoT-based environment. Based on this premise, the authors have proposed a generic Digital Forensic Investigation Framework for IoT (DFIF-IoT) that is able to support future IoT investigative capabilities with a degree of certainty. The proposed framework includes the following advantage: It complies with the ISO/IEC 27043: 2015 which is an international standard for information technology, security techniques, incident investigation principles, and process. It is, therefore, the authors' opinion that if the proposed framework is successfully incorporated in future DF tool development, it will facilitate effective digital forensic crime investigation for IoT infrastructures.