Montasari, Reza, Carpenter, Victoria ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3880-6555 and Hill, Richard (2019) A Road Map for Digital Forensics Research: A Novel Approach for Establishing the Design Science Research Process in Digital Forensics. International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 11 (2). pp. 194-224.

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Abstract

Compared to other well-established scientific fields such as Computer Science (CS) or Information Security (IS), Computer Forensics (CF) is still evolving as a new scientific field. As a result of such an evolution, CF still lacks standardisation in various aspects including, but not limited to, process models, datasets, procedures, techniques, as well as formal research methodologies. As a result, progress in the establishment of CF as a scientific field has been hindered. Such a lack of standardisation has prompted debates on the scientific credentials of CF. This paper aims to address one of such issues concerning the lack of standardisation, namely the absence of formal research methods in CF. Our paper has been motivated by the awareness that much of studies to date in CF has focused on the applied research at the expense of theoretical aspects such as formal research methodologies that are urgently needed to advance research in digital forensics. Therefore, this study adds to the body of knowledge by filling the gap that there does not currently exist a well-established research methodology in CF. To this end, we borrow a well-established research methodology from the domain of IS, namely Peffers et al.’s (2006), adapt and extend it and make it relevant to research studies in CF. We will demonstrate how each phase of the DSRP can be applied to different stages of a CF research. This study sets a precedent for other researchers to identify, adapt, extend and apply other well-established research methods to studies in CF.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
DOI:	10.1504/IJESDF.2019.10018777
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
School/Department:	Academic Development Directorate
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/3051

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