History of digital forensics:

1978 - The first cyber crimes recognized

• The 1978 Florida Computer Crimes Act was introduced and it included legislation against the unauthorized modification or deletion of data.

1980 - Federal laws begin to incorporate computer offenses

• As the range of computer crimes increased, state laws were passed to deal with copyright, privacy, harassment, and child pornography.

1983 - Canada passes legislation

• Canada becomes the first country to pass nationwide legislation related to cyber crimes and digital forensics.

1984 - FBI launches Computer Analysis and Response Team

• A computer analysis and response team was launched by the FBI to handle technical investigations.

1985 - Britain’s computer crime department

• The British Metropolitan Police fraud squad launches a computer crime department.

1986 - The US follows and digital forensics gets its first real use

• The United States introduces legislation for cyber crimes and Cliff Stoll pursues Markus Hess using a computer and network forensics to identify Hess.
• Hess is best known for hacking networks of military and industrial computers based in the US, Europe, and East Asia.

1989 - Australia adds cyber crimes to the act of their crime

• Australia follows the US and Canada’s lead and introduces cyber crimes into their legislation.

1990 - Britain joins in and digital forensics goes mainstream

• Britain introduces The Computer Misuse Act.

1992 - Computer forensics was first used in academic literature

• Computer forensics was used in academic literature in a paper by Collier and Spaul that attempted to justify digital forensics as a new discipline.

2001 - British National Hi-Tech Crime Unit introduced

• They provided national infrastructure for computer crime with personnel located centrally in London and with the various regional police forces.

2002 - Best practices for Computer Forensics

• The Scientific Working Group on Digital Evidence (SWGDE) produces Best Practices for Computer Forensics

2004 - The Convention of Cybercrime comes into force

• The treaty was signed by 43 nations and ratified by 16.

2005 - ISO standard for digital forensics released

• ISO 17025, General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories.

2009 - Digital forensics continues to face issues

• A 2009 paper, Digital Forensics Research: The Good, the Bad and the Unaddressed identified a bias towards Windows operating systems in digital forensics research despite widespread use of smartphones, Unix, and Linux-based OS.

2010 - Simson Garfinkel points out more issues

• The increasing size of digital media, widespread encryption, growing variety of operating systems and file formats, more individuals owning multiple devices, and legal limitations are key risks to digital forensics investigations. The paper also identified training issues and the high cost of entering the field as key issues. Other key issues include the shift toward Internet crime, cyber warfare, and cyber terrorism.