A cross-domain qualitative meta-analysis of digital forensics: Research trends, challenges, and emerging topics

Due to its critical role in cybersecurity, digital forensics has received much focus from researchers and practitioners. The ever increasing sophistication of modern cyberattacks is directly related to the complexity of evidence acquisition, which often requires the use of different technologies. To date, researchers have presented many surveys and reviews in the field. However, such works focused on the advances of each domain of digital forensics individually. Therefore, while each of these surveys facilitates researchers and practitioners to keep up with the latest advances in a particular domain of digital forensics, the overall picture is missing. By following a sound research methodology, we performed a qualitative meta-analysis of the literature in digital forensics. After a thorough analysis of such literature, we identified key issues and challenges that spanned across different domains and allowed us to draw promising research lines, facilitating the adoption of strategies to address them.