An Efficient Approach to Forensic Investigation in Cloud Using VM Snapshots

Abstract

Cloud computing has recently emerged as a technology to allow users/clients to access infrastructure, storage, software and deployment environment based on a pay-for-what-they-use model. Traditional digital forensics cannot handle the multi-tenant and dynamic nature of the cloud environment as it has to address various technical, legal, and organizational challenges pertaining to the cloud systems. The dynamic nature of cloud computing gives abundant opportunities to enable digital investigations in the cloud environment. This paper addresses the challenges of digital forensics in the cloud environment and existing solutions to ease some of the challenges. We propose an efficient approach to forensic investigation in cloud using Virtual Machine (VM) snapshots.