Cyber Crime and Security: A New Model of Law Enforcement Investigation

As the Internet continues to evolve and present the motivated cybercriminal with a vast range of opportunities to commit both crime and other undesirable behaviours, then mainstream law enforcement must equally have the capability to react. This paper identifies that cybercrime investigation is much more than just low-level technology examination or digital evidence recovery and requires the specific inclusion of a wide range of technical and non-technical professional disciplines and investigative skills. This paper draws on the author's earlier research alongside the current challenges and issues of cybercrime and examines the many cybercrime investigation models and frameworks found throughout the literature to identify six guiding research objectives. This paper then presents the development of a new Cybercrime Investigation Framework that uniquely integrates and consolidates the technical complexity of investigating the Internet and networked technology with the investigation principles and procedures of mainstream law enforcement.