Digital Forensic Investigations: A New Frontier for Informing Systems

Digital forensic investigators experience a need for support in their everyday struggle to overcome boundary problems associated with cyber crime investigations. Traditional methods are socio-culturally and physically localised and dependent on strict and historically prescriptive political management. The new internet-worked cyber-world creates unprecedented difficulties for digital forensic investigations. This is directly linked with the inherently complex uncertainties and ambiguities related to a constant need for framing and re-framing of problem spaces under investigation. As such, in this paper we propose the recruitment of the discipline of Informing Systems in the context of digital discovery. Early findings of such an exercise indicate that informing systems approaches can assist the investigation process by offering means for structuring uncertainty. As it is accepted that uncertainty is an inherent element in a crime scene, not least in a cyber crime scene, we consider the contribution of Informing Systems vital for the effectiveness of digital forensic investigation practices.