BANGALORE, INDIA: The rate of criminal activities in the cyber world is increasing at a rapid pace. Be it phishing, hacking, spreading malicious content, or pornography, cybercrimes are getting more sophisticated and there seems to be no end to it. To fight this battle for the benefit of the world, there is a need for effective cyber forensics.

The CIOL Enterprise Next, Virtual Conference, held today organized a session named, 'Cyber Forensics, a New Paradigm in Enterprise Security', which focused on the nuances of cyber forensics.

Speaker of the session, Rajan T Joseph, Director General, C-Dac said, “The last two decades has witnessed a rapid growth of Information Technology. The impact of digital IT brings endless benefits for the citizens and IT acts as a catalyst towards socialistic changes. But the dark side is the misuse of IT for criminal activities.

He further added that the cyber world is highly complex and functions with a set of narrow principles. An activity which might be considered criminal at one part of world, might not be so in another.

“The law enforcement groups face a new challenge with regards to cybercrimes, the police have fallen behind in this computer age and find it difficult to accept it as a major problem,” he said.

According to Joseph, cyber forensics can be defined as acquisition, authentication, analysis and documentation of evidence extracted from/and or contained in a computer system/network. It can also be defined as gathering data in a manner free from distortion or bias and providing clear results.

The analysis includes intense examination of the evidence collected.

There are a few challenges that come along the way of cyber forensic investigation, of which authenticity of the evidence collected plays a major role.

“There is a lack of physical evidence and acceptance of digital evidence at the court of law is a challenge as its is volatile and prone to modification. A detailed report of the analysis needs to be presented towards the court of law in such a way that it should be comprehensible to the judge who usually is not computer-savvy,” said Joseph.

Another major challenge comes in terms of securing or retrieving the evidence if deleted or hidden. The retrieval becomes painstaking if the data is deleted or hidden. The analysis includes a good examination of the data presented as an evidence.

Even the ever-increasing digital storage capacity comes as a hurdle in the time and effort required during the analysis.

According to Joseph, cyber forensics is rapidly influenced by technology change and it is required in the part of an analyst to update rapidly.

He further suggested that a cyber forensic analyst needs to have a good understanding on technologies as well as there is a need for technology solutions that can solve the challenges and give way for effective investigations.

“With technology evolving in rapid pace, rules too must change almost everyday. New technologies and procedure need to be designed for better means of collecting electronic evidence for the potential use in the prosecution. An all-round initiative is required to sustain efforts in cyber forensics,” concluded Joseph.