Future scoping digital forensics: Early computer crime to industrial IoT & humans to bots!

Early computer crime dates back to >50 years when the first digital computers were finding their place in daily lives. Law enforcement was coming to pace gradually with such advancements. The FBI only formed a Digital Forensics team in 1984 to meet the demand from the crime industry particularly, fraud-related.

Original digital forensics tools comprise Encase, that emerged in the 1990s and the first courses on digital forensics were gradually introduced.

Memory costs and constraints alongside limitations in access to criminal data, as the network line rates were not quite there, limited the rapid proliferation of the digital investigation domain until the 2000's.

Technological barriers were smashed and proliferation of network speed advancements, mobile devices and centralised (cloud, preceded by grid/parallel computing), led to a quick design and delivery of both proprietary as well as open source digital forensic tools.

Data through the roof in the past decade accompanied with 'everything online' i.e., the IoT, and widespread use of AI-based systems has taken us to the era of mass data, ad hoc investigative frameworks and lack of consistency in investigative reporting.

In this presentation, I shall provide a tunnel pass 'shedding light on journey' for digital forensics (back then to now and next) and provide a comprehensive assessment of the future of this field of study as we witness a technological evolution in an LLM and QC era.