A Study of Cost Structure Visualization for Digital Forensics Deployment

Overseas patent lawsuits and infringements of intellectual property rights have been increasing. As the Internet expands and globalization progresses, Japanese companies become more exposed to the risk of lawsuits overseas. Thus, digital forensics technology has been attracting attention. This technology enables the digital data a company manages to be disclosed as proof when a lawsuit is generated. However, digital forensics technology has not spread widely due to problems such as its high cost structure. In addition, this cost structure has not been fully analyzed yet. Therefore, in this study, the cost structure of digital forensics is quantified with the Work Breakdown Method (WBS), which is a project management method. First, literature about digital forensics was studied, and components were extracted. Next, a digital forensic cost structure was calculated with the WBS method. The cost structure of digital forensics can be divided roughly into system, operation, and facility. The results of the WBS clearly show that digital forensics requires many costs for practical use. As a result, the study can contribute to helping the manager of a company decide whether to introduce digital forensics or not.