Digital Forensic Investigation of Healthcare Data in Cloud Computing Environment

Abstract

Cloud computing is widely used in various sectors such as finance, health care, and education. Factors such as cost optimization, interoperability, data analysis, and data ownership functionalities are attracting healthcare industry to use cloud services. Security and forensic concerns are associated in cloud environments as sensitive healthcare data can attract the outside attacker and inside malicious events. Storage is the most used service in cloud computing environments. Data stored in iCloud (Apple Inc. Cloud Service Provider) is accessible via a Web browser, cloud client application, or mobile application. Apple Inc. provides iCloud service to synchronize data from MacBook, iPhone, iPad, etc. Core applications such as Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Photos, Notes, Reminders, and Keynote are synced with iCloud. Various operations can be performed on cloud data, including editing, deleting, uploading, and downloading data, as well as synchronizing data between devices. These operations generate log files and directories that are essential from an investigative perspective. This paper presents a taxonomy of iCloud forensic tools that provides a searchable catalog for forensic practitioners to identify the tools that meet their technical requirements. A case study involving healthcare data storage on iCloud service demonstrates that artifacts related to environmental information, browser activities (history, cookies, cache), synchronization activities, log files, directories, data content, and iCloud user activities are stored on a MacBook system. A GUI-based dashboard is developed to support iCloud forensics, specifically the collection of artifacts from a MacBook system.