An Ontological Approach to Study and Manage Digital Chain of Custody of Digital Evidence

Chain of custody of digital evidence in digital forensic field are today essential part of digital investigation process. In order the evidence to be accepted by the court as valid, chain of custody for digital evidence must be kept, or it must be known who exactly, when, where, why and how came into contact with evidence in each stage of the digital investigations process. This paper deals with digital evidence and chain of custody of digital evidence. Authors define taxonomy and use an ontological approach to manage chain of custody of digital evidence. The aim of this paper was to develop ontology to provide a new approach to study and better understand chain of custody of digital evidence . Additionally, developed ontology can be used as a method to further develop a set of standard and procedures for secure management with digital evidence.