Towards collaborative forensics: Preliminary framework

Digital forensic analysis techniques have been significantly improved and evolved in past decade but we still face a lack of effective forensic analysis tools to tackle diverse incidents caused by emerging technologies and the advances in cyber crime. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive framework to address the efficacious deficiencies of current practices in digital forensics. Our framework, called Collaborative Forensic Framework (CUFF), provides scalable forensic services for practitioners who are from different organizations and have diverse forensic skills. In other words, our framework helps forensic practitioners collaborate with each other, instead of learning and struggling with new forensic techniques. Also, CUFF uses and augments current and emerging standards, including DFXML and EDRM XML for concise file representation and efficient resource transmission. In addition, we describe fundamental building blocks for our framework and corresponding system requirements.