The three dimensions of cloud forensics

• To ensure service availability and cost-effectiveness, major Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), e.g., Amazon, Salesforce.com, Google, have data centers around the world in different jurisdictions providing cloud services.
• Data stored in one data center is replicated to multiple locations to ensure abundance and reduce the risk of single point of failure.
• Moreover, segregation of duties between the CSP and the customer in forensic responsibilities becomes different in different service models.
• Additionally, interactions between multiple tenants sharing same cloud resources are different in different deployment models.
• As a result, multi-jurisdiction and multi-tenancy have become a default setting for cloud forensics, creating much more legal challenges.
• To emphasize the fact that cloud forensics is a multidimensional issue instead of only a technical issue, we extend the definition of cloud forensics across three major dimensions: organizational, legal and technical.