Unveiling the Digital Shadows: A Comprehensive Exploration of Network Forensics Methodologies

The Internet has experienced significant growth in attacks that affect network security features such as confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Network security and network forensics work together to ensure system integrity, availability, and confidentiality. Network security measures prevent unau-theorized access, attacks, and breaches, while network forensics investigates and analyses the aftermath of security incidents. Network forensics refers to the process of collecting, analyzing, and preserving digital evidence from network activity in order to investigate and respond to security incidents, breaches, or other malicious activities. It involves reconstructing the events to determine attack methods, compromised data, and potential perpetrators. It lies at the intersection of digital forensics, incident response and network security. This paper is going to analyse the methodologies which are used in network forensics and application of new technologies in each network forensics methodology through ten figures. This paper critically examines network forensics methodologies, focusing on the evolution of these methods and the integration of emerging technologies. It assesses new strategies and discusses inherent issues and limitations of existing techniques, emphasizing the need for cutting-edge techniques to enhance the effectiveness of network forensic processes.