Focus and Scope

The International Journal of Cyber Forensics and Advanced Threat Investigations is supporting a forum for both theoretical and applied aspects of cybersecurity and is elaborated in two versions: a theoretical version, including original articles whose contents have never been published before, and a version including articles of applicative quality, relevant for their technological contents and aiming at practical results. An important part of the mission of the Journal is to promote cybersecurity, digital forensics, incident response, and threat investigations.

The journal aims to bring together researchers and practitioners working on related fields of cybersecurity, digital forensics, incident response, and threat investigations, to report new developments and latest proven methodologies, and to publish scholarly articles presenting current research issues and advances. The Journal also aims to provide insights for the discussion of the major research challenges and achievements regarding the theory, research, and practice in these rapidly changing topics.

We encourage contributions describing innovative work in the realm of the measures that governments or organizations should follow to protect the online information & critical infrastructure, the impacts of cyber-crime & cyber-attacks in organizations and/or individuals, malware/ransomware, analysis & reversing, hardware/software security testing, zero-day attacks & exploits, large-scale digital investigations, unconventional penetration testing tactics, techniques & tools, social engineering & human hacking, anti-forensics & anti-anti-forensics, identity theft & protection, women in cybersecurity & challenges faced by women in cyber forensics, relevant case studies in cybersecurity, digital forensics, incident response, & threat investigations, and proficient strategies for tackling the various types of cyber-attacks and cyber-crimes.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of topics that fall within the scope of the journal. Other non-listed topics that fall under the general cybersecurity umbrella are also of interest to the Journal. Topics covered include:

• Data leakage, Data protection, and Database investigations
• Executable Content and Content Filtering
• investigations of Virtual and Cloud Environments
• Investigation of Insider Attacks
• Malware investigations and Anti-Malware techniques
• New threats and Non-Traditional approaches
• Reverse engineering
• Threat Hunting and Intelligence
• Incident Management and Analysis
• Machine learning applications in cybersecurity and threat intelligence
• Focus on women's perspectives in cybersecurity, digital forensics, incident response, and threat investigations and challenges faced by women in these fields,
• Adversarial machine learning
• Advances in critical infrastructure security
• Privacy-enhancing techniques
• Evidentiary Aspects of Digital investigations
• Internet of Things, Smart Grid, Smart Car and Drone Forensics
• Ongoing integration of Artificial Intelligence/Deep Learning/Decision Support methodologies in Law Enforcement & Police Investigation
• File System and Memory Analysis
• Multimedia investigations
• Information Hiding, Steganography, and hidden data Analysis
• Large-Scale Investigations
• Vulnerability Management, Ethical Hacking, zero-day attacks, attack pattern recognition
• Network investigations and Traffic Analysis
• Hardware Vulnerabilities and Device investigations
• Computational Immunology, Authentication Authorizations
• Security in Mobile Platforms, Mobile Agents/Artificial Intelligence
• Security Policies/Procedures, Strategic Approaches, Requirements Engineering
• Identity Theft, Management Systems, Access Management Systems
• Open-source intelligence, criminal data mining/network analysis/intelligence, and digital forensic intelligence.
• Phishing/pharming/spearphishing, cyberwar, cyber-crime detection/analysis
• Digital cities, GSM-solicited crime
• Computer/mobile device/network/software forensics, anti-forensics
• Digital forensics tools/techniques/standardisation, testing/approvals for forensic tools
• Crime scene/search and seizure processes, criminal investigation of mobile devices
• Investigative techniques, judicial processes, legal/ethical issues, cyber-crime legislations
• Digital and physical surveillance, digital image manipulation
• Cryptography for cybersecurity, algorithms/protocols,
• Cybersecurity training and education,
• Open source cybersecurity tools, solutions, and applications.
• Current and future trends in Security, privacy, and trust in 5G/6G networks
• Blockchain technology and Cryptocurrency based trust systems.
• AI-driven Software-Defined Security, privacy, and trust
• Smart security of future connective systems
• Security analysis of existing cryptocurrencies.
• Game theory in aid of cybersecurity

Section Policies

Research Articles

Regular articles are full-length original empirical investigations and research, consisting of an introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion, conclusions. Original work must provide references and an explanation of research findings that contain new and significant findings. Along with the abstract, all research article submissions should include ‘Notes for Practice’ that highlight the significance of the work for practice. These notes should be comprised of bullet points outlining:

• A brief accessible overview of the established knowledge on the topic
• A summary of the contribution of the article
• Key implications of the article’s findings for practice, policy, and implementation of research

Each research article should lie within one or more of the basic cybersecurity methodologies either red teaming methodology, yellow teaming methodology, or blue teaming methodology. This will aid to reduce the time required to nominate prospective reviewers for the article.

Note: The research article should be at least 6 full pages and at most 30 pages (excluding the abstract, references, tables, and/or figures), a minimum of 7 references with 20% of the references should be from recent articles. Use a reference manager, such as Mendeley, Endnote, or Zotero to improve the quality of the article. An abstract of 100–200 words. Finally, It is advisable for the authors to consult the previous articles with similar topics, published in the journal.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Practical Articles

Practical article examines a subject of analysis in cybersecurity, digital forensics, incident response, and threat investigations in order to extrapolate key themes and results that help predict future trends, illuminate previously hidden issues that can be applied to practice, and/or provide a means for understanding an important research problem with greater clarity. A practical article usually examines a single subject of analysis, but practical articles can also be designed as a comparative investigation that shows relationships between two or among more than two subjects. The methods used to study a practical case can rest within a quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method investigative paradigm. Along with the abstract, all practical article submissions should include ‘Notes for Research’ that highlight the significance of the work for research. These notes should be comprised of bullet points outlining:

• What prior research findings do this practical article draw on
• What new contributions do the practical article make
• What significance does this have for researchers (contextualize existing findings, suggest new areas needing research, etc.)

Each practical article should lie within one or more of the basic cybersecurity methodologies either red teaming methodology, yellow teaming methodology, or blue teaming methodology. This will aid to reduce the time required to nominate prospective reviewers for the article.

Note: The practical article is about 6-30 pages, include appropriate figures and/or tables, and an abstract of 100–200 words.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Review Articles

Review article is a critical evaluation of materials about current research that has already been published by organizing, integrating, and evaluating previously published materials. It summarizes the status of knowledge and outlines future directions of research within the journal scope. It aims to provide systemic overviews, evaluations, and interpretations of research in a given field. The manuscript title must start with "Review Article:".

Each review article should lie within one or more of the basic cybersecurity methodologies either red teaming methodology, yellow teaming methodology, or blue teaming methodology. This will aid to reduce the time required to nominate prospective reviewers for the article.

Note: The review article is about 6-30 pages, include appropriate figures and/or tables, and an abstract of 100–200 words.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Hot Spot Notes

Hot Spot Notes are short industry case reports about emerging hot topics. Hot Spot Notes accurately document factual data as well as the settings, actions, behaviors, and consequences that are observed. They may also contain the thoughts, ideas, questions, and concerns that arise as the observation is conducted. Hot Spot Notes provide perspectives on a single phenomenon that, when accumulated over time, suggests new avenues of research.

To propose a Hot Spot Notes, please email the editors at cfati@conceptechint.net with:

• A short summary of the proposed Hot Spot Notes
• The proposed reviewers' biographies
• A short rationale for why these Notes are worthy of publication / will be of interest to the CFATI audience

All prospective reviewers must adhere to our ethics and conflict of interest policy: they are expected to not have close personal or collegial relations to the authors of materials they propose to review, nor any vested interest in the promotion or sale of certain products/services. Unsolicited reviews are accepted. Please do not send the Hot Spot Notes without first proposing it and having it approved by the editors. Commissioned reviews will be given careful editorial attention and a dialogue with the reviewer may occur before a final version is accepted.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Case Studies

Investigative case studies and reports describe how practitioners are dealing with emerging challenges in related fields of cybersecurity, cyber defence, digital forensics, incident response, cybercrime, and threat investigations along with highlighting areas that require further research, development, or legislation. Also, case studies establish a meaningful forum between practitioners and researchers with useful solutions in various fields of cybersecurity, cyber defence, digital forensics, incident response, cybercrime, and threat investigations.

The format for a case study is simple and short: abstract, case Introduction, any technical or legal challenges, the digital evidence involved, processes and/or tools used, outcomes, recommendations, and conclusions. The case study can also include all kinds of practical applications, which cover principles, projects, missions, techniques, tools, methods, processes, etc.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Legal Analysis Reports

Legal analysis reports are accurate comments by legal experts on recent cases related to legal measures that governments or organizations should follow to protect the online information and critical infrastructure, the impacts of cyber-crime and cyber-attacks in governments, organizations and/or individuals, cybersecurity applications, cybercrimes and threat investigations, guidelines on seizing digital evidence, counter-terrorism and surveillance-related legal developments, recent legal developments in social media and multimedia analysis strategies, data protection and privacy issues, and legislative restrictions.

To submit a legal analysis report, please submit the following:

• A short summary of the proposed legal analysis report
• The proposed reviewers' biographies
• A short rationale for why this report is worthy of publication / will be of interest to the CFATI audience

All prospective reviewers must adhere to our ethics and conflict of interest policy: they are expected to not have close personal or collegial relations to the authors of materials they propose to review, nor any vested interest in the promotion or sale of certain products/services. Commissioned reviews will be given careful editorial attention and a dialogue with the reviewer may occur before a final version is accepted.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Report on Tool and Tool Application

Reports on Tools and Tool Applications describe and evaluate software tools and tool applications in the journal's areas of interest, e.g., cybersecurity tools, tools for digital forensics, incident response, and threat investigations, and software architectures of such tools. A submission to this section should describe and justify the tool design including all relevant design objectives and requirements, design alternatives and decisions, and its software architecture. The tool description should focus on the specific features of the tool and relate the tool to other tools and prior related work. It is strongly encouraged that the described tools are freely available (i.e. Libre/Free/Open Source Software at best) . If this is not possible, they have to be made available to the reviewers for the reviewing process (please email the editors at cfati@conceptechint.net for an arrangement). Submissions to this section are double-blind peer-reviewed by at least two reviewers (with review criteria adapted to the specifics of this section), and must adhere to scholarly standards in terms of originality, level of abstraction, and justification.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

International Workshops/Conferences of CFATI

CFATI Journal sponsors conferences, seminars, or workshops in related areas on a case by case basis. CFATI Journal may invite conference organizers or chairs to serve as guest editors for special or themed issues publishing selected papers from the conference proceedings. Interested parties are encouraged to contact the editors at cfati@conceptechint.net with their proposals and they are subject to approval by the journal editor-in-chief.

The names of the guest editor(s) and editorial board members for a special or themed issue will be published in that issue. If it is a special issue of a conference proceedings, the details of the conference and the proceedings papers will be cited.

This section is a special issue of selected and revised articles from the International Workshops/Conferences of CFATI after peer-reviewed by CFATI's Editorial Board and Reviewers. Only registered participants can submit their papers.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Special Issue Articles

In order to better serve our academic community and concentrate on highly interest, special issues of any subjects in cybersecurity, digital forensics, incident response, and threat investigations are welcome at any time. A special issue should be organized by accomplished experts in a given area and it should attract articles of the highest quality.

Proposals of special issue should include the following information:

• A suggested title for the Special Issue
• Number of expected article to be accepted
• The timeline of the special issue until it published
• Proposed Aims and Scope with an outline of the Special Issue's intended focus and a list of the topics to be covered
• Names of Guest Editors who are willing to manage the Special Issue with their emails, affiliations, and an one-paragraph biography of each of the Guest Editors

All proposals should be submitted to the editors at cfati@conceptechint.net and they are subject to approval by the journal editor in chief.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Book Reviews

Book Reviews proposals are welcomed by the Journal of Cyber Forensics and Advanced Threat Investigations. Reviews inform readers about recent publications relevant to cybersecurity, digital forensics, incident response, and threat investigations, and the use of cybersecurity tools in education. Reviews may be of single books or can be review essays that discuss and compare two or more books addressing related topics. Reviewers must have sufficient up-to-date expertise in the topic(s) of the book they propose to review and familiarity with the literature of the Cyber Forensics and Advanced Threat Investigations field overall. The book reviews should be no more than 8,000 words in length and provide a concise introduction to the book's primary topics, themes, and messages followed by a critical analysis of its strengths, weaknesses, and relevance to the field.

To propose a book review, please email the editors at cfati@conceptechint.net with:

• The citation and a brief description of the book proposed for review
• The proposed reviewer's CV
• A short rationale for why the book is worthy of review / will be of interest to the CFATI audience

All prospective reviewers must adhere to our ethics and conflict of interest policy: they are expected to not have close personal or collegial relations to the authors of materials they propose to review, nor any vested interest in the promotion or sale of the book. Unsolicited reviews are not accepted. Please do not send a review without first proposing it and having it approved by the editors. Commissioned reviews will be given careful editorial attention and a dialogue with the reviewer may occur before a final version is accepted.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Letter to the Editor

Letters may discuss previously published material or commentaries in the International Journal of Cyber Forensics and Advanced Threat Investigations (CFATI) or any issue of interest to the International Journal of Cyber Forensics and Advanced Threat Investigations (CFATI). Letters commenting on the published material are shared with the original authors to give them an opportunity to respond. Interested parties are encouraged to contact the editors at cfati@conceptechint.net with their letters and they are subject to approval by the journal editor-in-chief.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

This journal operates a conventional double-blind reviewing policy, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. Authors should present their articles honestly without fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or inappropriate data manipulation. Submitted articles are evaluated by anonymous referees for contribution, originality, relevance, and presentation.

Upon submission of any manuscript for consideration for publication in a journal published by Concept Tech Publishing, the scientific editor first scans it for plagiarism to verify its originality, then performs a search of the Web of Science, Scopus, Google and/or IEEE databases to determine the topical relevance and timeliness of the manuscript’s content as well as to make an initial assessment of potential academic misconduct related to the general features of the study and/or topical content. The results of this initial review are either approval to enter into the peer review process (double-blind peer review) or rejection. The first step in the peer review process involves the delivery of the manuscript to 1 to 3 external reviewers with expertise in the paper’s topic and/or field, at least one reviewer who will either be a member of the Editorial Board or others of similar standing in the field. The reviewers are allotted a period of 30 to 60 days in which to thoughtfully assess the manuscript and return comments to the editorial office, at which time the editorial director conducts a decision-making meeting to assess the reviewers’ comments. Manuscripts that have received positive comments and meet the general publication requirements of Concept Tech Publishing and any specific requirements of the particular journal are forwarded directly to the editor-in-chief, who provides signatory approval recommending that the manuscript is “To Be Accepted”. If the manuscript fails to meet the high-quality standard assessed by the peer reviewers or does not meet the Concept Tech Publishing and/or journal-specific criteria, it is rejected. All manuscripts recommended for acceptance must pass a final review by the editor-in-chief before they are officially accepted for publication and entered into the production phase. The scientific editors’ decisions are final and no correspondence can be entered into concerning manuscripts considered unsuitable for publication in this journal. All correspondence, including notification of the Editors’ decision and requests for revisions, will be sent by email.

CFATI journal has four kinds of decisions:

• Publish as is, Accepted, as it is
• Publish with minor corrections or additions, Accepted by Minor Revisions, and let authors revised with a stipulated time.
• Major changes and a second review are required, Major Revisions are required. The authors revise with a stipulated time, then resubmit for a second review.
• Reject, Generally, on grounds of outside of scope and aim, major technical description problems, lack of clarity of presentation.

Criteria for Publication

In order to be approved for publication in International Journal of Cyber Forensics and Advanced Threat Investigations (CFATI), the following criteria should be regarded as a standard:

Completeness
A manuscript should be concisely and neatly written, nevertheless, completeness in argumentation, style, statistics, practical appliances, and used sources is the main factor of assessment for publication. If two different authors submit two articles with similar topics and conclusions, the one with more thorough and detailed text will be selected to be published.  

Originality
Articles have to be originally written by their author(s), and any sources or other articles used in the work should be properly and clearly disclosed. The editorial board decides whether an article would be published or not, mostly by its novelty, significance of the subject matter, and practical appliance in the scientific discourse. All the submitted manuscripts will be thoroughly checked for plagiarism and novelty. All manuscripts submitted for publication to CFATI may be cross-checked for plagiarism using specific software. Similarity index should not exceed 20%   

References
All the information used from other already published articles or scientific works should be clearly stated and cited following good academic conventions. References have to be fully and precisely acknowledged and put into the submitted manuscript as well as all the statistics and figures included in the article.

Metadata
All additional data, statistics, and other sources, which are used for the base of the article’s premises, have to be sent and published alongside the manuscript. It has to be accurately described with enough metadata and links to the used materials and articles in order to be easily reachable and discoverable. 

Ethical aspects
All the articles submitted for publication should follow and cover the ethical conventions and not abuse the moral rights of other authors, communities, companies, organizations, institutions, etc.

Academic style and language standards
Articles must be neatly and concisely written, they have to be logically coherent and follow the academic style and formatting. All the arguments, premises, conclusions, and results should be clearly stated, and supported by the necessary referential data and sources. All the manuscripts should be written in grammatically correct English language. The authors will be asked to certify the level and quality of their text’s English language. Manuscripts written in poor English could be a subject of rejection prior to peer review.

Reasons For The Rejection of a Manuscript

The following reasons are adequate, alone or in combination, for rejection of a manuscript for publication:

• The scientific content does not correspond to the journal’s aims and scope;
• The data are inadequate to support proper explanations or conclusions;
• Related work has been previously published and only a few new points have been added;
• The article contains accumulated information that has been previously published, with only a few technical improvements;
• The article is expected to attract only a very small portion of the journal’s readership audience;
• The article has been rejected previously and resubmitted without adding any new valuable content.

Publication Frequency

The International Journal of Cyber Forensics and Advanced Threat Investigations is published thrice a year in the spring, summer and fall. The submission will be open the whole year.

Open Access Policy

The International Journal of Cyber Forensics and Advanced Threat Investigations (CFATI) is a Gold-Open Access journal, which provides open access to its contents, believing that making research freely available to the public improves the global exchange of knowledge. CFATI adheres to the best practice and high publishing standards and complies with the following conditions:

• Provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely accessible online to the entire global research community, which ensures high visibility, maximizes exposure of published articles, and supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Benefits of open access for authors include:
- Free access for all users worldwide
- High citations
- Increased visibility and readership
- Rapid publication
- Quality, reputable and high standard of peer-review
- Included in major bibliographic databases
- No spatial constraints

• CFATI also operates under the Creative Commons Licence CC-BY-SA. Authors are required to assign the copyright in their articles to Concept Tech Publishing. The intended copyright allows the distribution of the published material under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Anyone may download, reuse, copy, reprint, distribute, or modify articles published in the journal, as long as they cite the original authors and source properly and any distribution of derivative works is under the same license as the original.

• Under the CC-BY-SA license, authors retain the copyright on their contributions but grant anyone the ability to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy materials published by CFATI, provided that the author and title of the journal are correctly cited. Authors are allowed to use their articles for any legal purposes deemed necessary without requesting permission from the journal with an acknowledgment of initial publication to this journal. This complies with the Budapest Open Access Initiative's definition of Open Access.

• CFATI deposits content with a long-term digital preservation or archiving program.

• CFATI uses DOIs as permanent identifiers.

• CFATI embeds machine-readable CC licensing information in articles.

• CFATI can provide article-level metadata for any indexers and aggregators

• CFATI has a deposit policy registered with a deposit policy registry, e.g. Sherpa/Romeo.

• CFATI is fully compliant with the requirements of Plan S, a key funder initiative to promote Open Access.

Archiving

The CFATI journal utilizes the PKP private LOCKSS network to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

In Addition to that, all published articles are ingested by the Internet Archive Scholar service where the full-text is available. This is a long-term preservation facility.