Virtual sensor forensics

Sensorial escalation, heterogeneity, pervasiveness, and increased connectivity have created a haven for cyber-criminals, where potential attacks are being exacerbated on a daily basis. In essence, most automated systems are not built to be able to dynamically detect potential security incidents or to provide digital forensic evidence that could be used for forensic hypothesis formation. Consequently, several ISO standards have also been proposed, however, they present a very generic view on investigation. Notably, in the recent past, sensorial proliferation has seen the increased usage of virtual sensors that have extended the functionalities and utilization of physical sensors-where sensing can be done using an abstraction/logical layers, which allows streamed sensor data to be collected dynamically in a proactive approach. The usage of virtual sensors has proved to be threat driven and the vulnerable threat landscape keeps being exploited. In this position paper, the author proposes a Virtual Sensor Forensic (VSF) architecture that may accurately give insights on event response processes, as a reactive technique. The proposed VSF architecture has dimensions that are application-specific, which shows that during the collection of streamed sensor data, post-event response may be of importance towards the detection of potential security incidents. The effort that has been put across in this position has presented the agenda of virtual sensor forensics based on a novel approach, that can be used as a post-event mechanism with a degree of acceptability.