Abstract:
There is no doubt that the forthcoming European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into effect on 25th May 2018, will certainly concentrate many corporate minds. As for those who rely on cloud computing, there is likely to be even more consternation in the ranks, due to the issues surrounding dealing with the Cloud Forensic Problem. While it is the case that all computing systems are constantly under serious attack, this particular problem arises due to the fact that once an attacker gains a foothold in a cloud system and becomes an intruder, there is very little to prevent the intruder from gaining sufficient privileges to then completely delete all trace of their incursion, possibly deleting far more records than they need to in the process. Additionally, there is nothing to prevent them from then helping themselves to any amount of data covered by the GDPR, either by viewing it, modifying it, deleting it or ex-filtrating it from the victim system. This, then, will present a compliance nightmare to a great many cloud users, many of whom are poorly prepared to cope with this serious practical and financial challenge. In this paper, we consider how the use of robust forensic audit techniques from the accounting world might be applied to mitigate this serious challenge for such companies.