For a larger enterprise with say multiple and/or international locations, a private cloud infrastructure can provide an added cost benefit that whilst not as cheap as a public cloud offering, would offset that cost variance in terms of the risk profile of systems being moved into a private cloud e.g. critical databases, transactional and/or processing systems as well as potential compliance concerns.

If however an enterprise chooses to utilize a public cloud offering there will be the added complications for information security, in terms of procedural and legal standpoints. This leads us to the point that, with a public cloud system; we no longer have the traditional defined security perimeter.

This new cloud security perimeter can now be any place on any device where people will access an enterprise provided network, resources and systems.

With regard to digital forensics and the e-discovery process, this new cloud security perimeter stemming from the trend with which data is now accessed via the internet, housed and consumed on multiple systems and devices internationally, will pose some serious challenges(legally and technically) with the potential to complicate a security investigation. e.g. defining incident response, access rules and policies governing  access as well as  support processes.

Traditional network forensics  metrics will not give a complete picture of what can occur within the cloud computing environment; for instance there could be limitations in terms of focus only on data going  into and out from  systems which an enterprise has access to, and as we know this generally stops at the gateway into the cloud.

In terms of network forensics, packet capture and analysis is important; with the cloud ecosystem there is the real possibility of an increase in the vast amount of data that may need to be processed. This will only increase the workload on the digital investigator who will most likely have more than a plate full of hex patterns, network metadata and logs to analyze., as is the case with a traditional system analysis.

This increased volume can severely cripple an investigation; more so if a forensic investigator does not completely understand the cloud ecosystem’s architecture, its complex linkages that bridge cloud services and an enterprise’s systems in addition to how these systems impact an enterprise in terms of potential ingress points that can lead to systems compromise.

via The Impact of the Cloud on Digital Forensics – Part 1 | Eclipse Developer’s Journal.