  Cloud computing is a rapidly evolving information technology (IT) phenomenon.
Rather than procure, deploy and manage a physical IT infrastructure to host
their software applications, organizations are increasingly deploying their
infrastructure into remote, virtualized environments, often hosted and managed
by third parties. This development has significant implications for digital
forensic investigators, equipment vendors, law enforcement, as well as
corporate compliance and audit departments (among others). Much of digital
forensic practice assumes careful control and management of IT assets
(particularly data storage) during the conduct of an investigation. This paper
summarises the key aspects of cloud computing and analyses how established
digital forensic procedures will be invalidated in this new environment.
Several new research challenges addressing this changing context are also
identified and discussed.
