Diversity Networks in Digital Investigations

This paper is built upon the need that digital forensic investigators are required in many cases to investigate, understand and report on all kind of cyber-crime including novel security breaches which have not been performed in the past. When an investigator is faced with the challenge to explore a new threat, we argue that the inquiry dynamics do not differ from an organisational employee challenged to perform innovation. This is not just about challenging one’s own assumptions; not just challenging the assumptions of one’s colleagues but creating a dialogue among colleagues about the processes of questioning assumptions in order to uncover a richer appreciation of the uncertainties of the problem-space to be the subject of inquiry. This paper draws upon the approach of diversity networks which is used to support inquiry into complex problem spaces including the necessary requirement for innovation, and it is shown how this paradigm could be adopted by the forensic investigator to shed light on the uncertainty aspects of a cyber crime scene.