This edited book introduces the reader to various aspects of digital forensics and digital investigation techniques.

The introduction chapter, the only chapter in Section 1, sets the scene for the book. This chapter concludes with references to the relevant digital forensics societies and journals (mostly published by Springer). However, three key digital forensics publications are missing from this list: IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, Digital Investigation, and Journal of Forensic Sciences. The conclusion of this chapter also reminds me of the typical responses I receive when I mention digital forensics: “Digital forensics is something I saw on CSI or NCIS” (popular American police procedural dramas).

Section 2 comprises five chapters. These chapters, contributed by researchers from Iran (chapter 2), Egypt (chapter 3), Malaysia (chapter 4), India and China (chapter 5), and Australia (chapter 6), discuss different techniques. Chapter 2 briefly surveys social network forensics, and chapter 3 highlights the importance of developing a forensically sound biometric application. In the next two chapters, the authors introduce a language identification technique and a way of conducting random sampling, and demonstrate their utility in digital forensic investigation. In the last chapter of this section, the authors propose a conceptual framework that integrates data mining and data fusion and validates the framework with January to May 2007 crime data obtained from Los Angeles County, CA, USA.

The 12 chapters in the last section cover a broad range of digital forensic applications, from facial analysis (chapters 7, 14) to biometrics analysis (chapters 8, 13). Age identification and the identification of drugs are covered in chapters 9 and 10, respectively. Chapter 11 explores the detection of counterfeit radio frequency identification (RFID) tags.

Learning remote computer (or perhaps any digital device?) fingerprinting is explained in chapter 12. The authors cover footwear analysis in chapter 15. Identifying handwritten authorship is the topic of chapter 16. Chapter 17 examines the use of data mining techniques, and chapter 18 looks at voice analysis. However, I am surprised that newer digital forensic domains, such as cloud and mobile, are not covered in this section or elsewhere in the book.

Overall, the book is a useful companion for those interested in learning more about computation forensics, although it may fail to excite digital forensic practitioners. Digital forensics books such as [1,2,3,4] are likely to be of more interest to digital forensic practitioners due to the depth of the research on a particular topic (for example, iOS forensics, Android forensics, and cloud storage forensics).