With the cloud becoming a major part of the computing world, it is important to focus on cloud forensics as a cyber criminal would most certainly leave a trail. 

Traditionally forensics has been considered a post incident situation which helps to decode the source of crime.

Most of the e-governance applications are online today whether on external or internal cloud. Because of multi-tenancy and multi-jurisdiction of the three pillars of cloud – infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) – the victim must inform the appropriate law enforcement agency, consumer or cloud provider as to who perpetrated the crime. This would make things clearer while pursuing the case legally.

One should also be careful while disposing of old equipment like laptops, etc. I know about a government agency where the computer keyboards failed after nine months of purchase. These keyboards were subsequently replaced by the supplier. However, in the process of replacement, the valuable data of nine months was handed over to the supplier. So, it is important to educate people about e-security measures.

Like in this case, the message is clear that one should clean up even keyboards before disposal. It is better to destroy the equipment rather than hand it to someone else.