In de Braekt, RonaldRonaldIn de BraektLe-Khac, Nhien-AnNhien-AnLe-KhacFarina, JasonJasonFarinaScanlon, MarkMarkScanlonKechadi, TaharTaharKechadi2016-05-172016-05-172016 IEEE2016-04-27http://hdl.handle.net/10197/76204th IEEE International Symposium on Digital Forensics and Security (ISDFS), Arkansas, USA, 25-27 April 2016The growth of digital storage capacities and diversity devices has had a significant time impact on digital forensic laboratories in law enforcement. Backlogs have become commonplace and increasingly more time is spent in the acquisition and preparation steps of an investigation as opposed to detailed evidence analysis and reporting. There is generally little room for increasing digital investigation capacity in law enforcement digital forensic units and the allocated budgets for these units are often decreasing. In the context of developing an efficient investigation process, one of the key challenges amounts to how to achieve more with less. This paper proposes a workflow management automation framework for handling common digital forensic tools. The objective is to streamline the digital investigation workflow - enabling more efficient use of limited hardware and software. The proposed automation framework reduces the time digital forensic experts waste conducting time consuming, though necessary, tasks. The evidence processing time is decreased through server-side automation resulting in 24/7 evidence preparation. The proposed framework increases efficiency of use of forensic software and hardware, reduces the infrastructure costs and license fees, and simplifies the preparation steps for the digital investigator. The proposed approach is evaluated in a real-world scenario to evaluate its robustness and highlight its benefits.en© © 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Workflow managementDigital forensicsInvestigative processWorkflow automationConference Publication10.1109/ISDFS.2016.74735202016-05-11https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ie/