Presentation: Cloud Computing & Digital Investigations

Owen O’Connor
Champlain College Dublin
Ireland
 

ABSTRACT

Cloud computing is being adopted for a wide range of business functions, from replacing traditional applications such as Customer Relationship Management to performing large processing tasks using low-cost resources accessed over the Internet. The efficiency benefits and cost savings from cloud computing have led to the development of a large ecosystem of cloud computing providers based on the concepts of Software-as-a-Service (e.g., Salesforce.com, Google Apps, Microsoft Hosted Exchange), “Platform-as-a-Service” (e.g., Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure, Force.com) and Infrastructure-as-a- Service or utility computing (e.g., Amazon Web Services, Slicehost / Mosso, Flexiscale).

Just as business processes and typical IT tasks can benefit from these services, digital investigations can also be made more efficient by adopting utility computing and other aspects of cloud computing. In particular many of the mathematically-intensive functions in digital forensics can be carried out far more quickly using utility computing services such as Amazon EC2, for example calculating cryptographic hashes, performing optical character recognition and carrying out text searches (either directly or via indexing). Digital investigators should also be aware of the potential uses of cloud computing in online investigations, for example to enable complex searches of online content, to assist with covert investigations and to provide temporary virtual servers for online monitoring or content hosting.

This presentation will review the current state of cloud computing, outline the services of leading services and present examples of cloud computing usage in business. The relevance of cloud computing to digital investigations will then be explained, covering the potential for bulk data processing “in the cloud”, the use of utility computing services in online investigations and the investigative benefits of Amazon’s Alexa Web Services and other open web services. Finally the potential risks of cloud computing will be discussed, focusing on the need for risk analysis process to determine where cloud computing may be appropriate and how risks to confidentiality and forensic integrity can be addressed.