The state of database forensic research

Abstract

A sentiment that is quite often encountered in database forensic research material is the scarcity of scientific research in this vital area of digital forensics. Databases have been around for many years in the digital space and have moved from being exclusively used in specialised applications of big corporations to becoming a means to an end in even the simplest end-user applications. Newer disciplines such as cloud forensics seem to be producing a far greater volume of new research material than database forensics. This paper firstly investigates the validity of the expressed sentiment. It also attempts to establish possible reasons for the apparent lack of research in this area. A survey was conducted of scientific research material that was published after an initial assessment was performed in 2009. The gathered database forensic material was compared to scientific material published in the same period in the cloud forensic discipline. The survey indicated that the speed of research into database forensics has increased since the 2009 paper. However the area of cloud forensics has produced twice the amount of new research in the same time period. The factors that made cloud forensics an attractive research area are either not applicable to database forensics or no longer play a significant role. This would explain the lesser interest in performing research in database forensics.