Towards an applicability of current network forensics for cloud networks: A SWOT analysis

In recent years, the migration of the computational workload to computational clouds has attracted intruders to target and exploit cloud networks internally and externally. The investigation of such hazardous network attacks in the cloud network requires comprehensive network forensics methods (NFM) to identify the source of the attack. However, cloud computing lacks NFM to identify the network attacks that affect various cloud resources by disseminating through cloud networks. In this paper, the study is motivated by the need to find the applicability of current (C-NFMs) for cloud networks of the cloud computing. The applicability is evaluated based on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) to outlook the cloud network. To the best of our knowledge, no research to date has been conducted to assist network forensics investigators and cloud service providers in finding an optimal method for investigation of network vulnerabilities found in cloud networks. To this end and in this paper, the state-of-the-art C-NFMs are classified and analyzed based on the cloud network perspective using SWOT analysis. It implies that C-NFMs have a suitable impact on cloud network, which further requires for reformation to ensure its applicability in cloud networks.