Digital Forensics as I see it !

Since I started my research in the area of Digital Forensics in October 2001 in Central Forensic Science Laboratory-Hyderabad, One thing that have not changed is flamboyancy of the area. But on the other hand the rate of change of technology has increased tremendously resulting in very small window of opportunity for development of forensically sound new solutions. In most cases by the time a problem is solved technological changes make solution almost obsolete. For example most of us carry a laptop which has a CD/ DVD drive, which we rarely use. Similarly today most computer have hard disk drive, which will vanish soon as new storage technology i.e. solid state drives have started replacing them at a rapid pace. Thus, need of the hour in front of digital forensic research is to develop solutions by anticipating future technologies and their possible misuses. Time has come where such pro-activeness will play a crucial role along with need of development of economical, scalable and efficient digital forensic solutions. Digital forensics like many other fields follow 80:20 principle i.e. certain type of cases constitute the most of reported cases. Thus by developing solutions for a small set of recurring cases which are commonly reported to law enforcement agencies, researchers can bring a positive impact on perception of digital forensics in common man. Digital forensic group led by me is conducting research to develop forensically sound solutions to cater to law enforcement agencies tackle Computer Frauds and Cyber Crimes (CFCC). The prominent problems we are are working on include detection of counterfeit documents,  establishment of authenticity of date and time stamps of digital data, document integrity establishment, privacy preserving forensic investigation. The objective is to develop light footprint, economical, extremely portable and scalable solutions.