Digital Forensic Readiness for Cyber Security Practitioners: An Integrated Model

Abstract

The growing threat of online fraud and security breach incidents poses significant challenges to enforcement agencies and those involved with digital forensics globally. Digital forensic readiness (DFR) enables an organization to prepare itself to perform an investigation more efficiently. The issue that often arises is organizations have no proper DFR plan to deal with forensic incidents. A DFR plan will provide the proactive capability for preparing digital forensic investigation. Various factors have been mentioned in the previous studies of DFR models including legal, people, management support, policy, and many more. However, no model emphasizes the mental readiness for digital forensics investigation, that is another important factor influencing a person to be prepared in new technologies as digital forensic is always dynamic. Mental readiness in this context refers to preparing the mind for forensics incidents to accomplish the required outcome. For this reason, the existing factors in the DFR will be integrated with the Technology Readiness Index (TRI). The objectives of this study are to examine the availability of the DFR Plan, to select the optimum DFR factors for cybersecurity practitioners, and to develop an integrated DFR model. This research aims to investigate digital forensic readiness factors that influence cybersecurity practitioners to be equipped for digital forensic investigations. The expected results of this study are Digital Forensic Readiness factors for cybersecurity practitioners and the Integrated Digital Forensic Readiness model for cybersecurity practitioners.