As with other types of evidence, the courts make no presumption that digital evidence is reliable without some evidence of empirical testing in relation to the theories and techniques associated with its production. The issue of reliability means that courts pay close attention to the manner in which electronic evidence has been obtained and in particular the process in which the data is captured and stored. Previous process models have tended to focus on one particular area of digital forensic practice, such as law enforcement, and have not incorporated a formal description. We contend that this approach has prevented the establishment of generally-accepted standards and processes that are urgently needed in the domain of digital forensics. This paper presents a generic process model as a step towards developing such a generally-accepted standard for a fundamental digital forensic activity–the acquisition of digital evidence
