Challenges of Digital Investigations in Nowadays Communication Networks

As a branch of digital investigation network forensics is faced with different arising challenges due to the evolution of modern networks. These networks are getting faster, more dynamic and self-provisioned, which hampers the identification of potential data origins or data sinks. Aspects like encryption and network implementations like virtual private networks hamper the analysis of the traffic. Arising technologies like automotive IT, (I)IoT or edge and fog computing create new paradigms in communication. So, the different challenges affect all parts of capturing, recording and analyzing of the network traffic. This paper analyzes the above situation from a forensics perspective, derives relevant challenges of network forensic investigation in modern networks and provides an overview of the current research to overcome these.