Abstract

The rapid expansion of cloud-based Learning Management Systems (LMS) has reshaped teaching, learning, and assessment practices in higher education by enabling scalable, flexible, and data-intensive educational services. However, this transformation has also increased institutional exposure to cybersecurity incidents, data breaches, and misuse of sensitive academic information. The distributed, virtualised, and service-provider–controlled nature of cloud infrastructures complicates digital forensic investigations, as conventional forensic methods were largely developed for systems under direct organisational control. As a result, higher education institutions cannot effectively identify, preserve, and analyse digital evidence following incidents within cloud-hosted LMS environments. This study proposes a Cloud LMS Forensics Framework that addresses these challenges by integrating forensic readiness, investigative processes, and incident response within a socio-technical systems perspective. The framework explicitly incorporates LMS-specific evidence sources, such as learning activity logs, assessment records, and user interaction traces, while accounting for human behaviour, organisational governance, and cloud service provider dependencies. It further considers legal and regulatory requirements for educational data protection, jurisdictional constraints, and evidentiary admissibility. By embedding forensic mechanisms into LMS operations before incident occurrence, the framework enables proactive evidence preservation, reduces investigative delays, and enhances the reliability of forensic outcomes. The proposed framework advances cloud digital forensics by contextualising forensic practice within educational systems and offers a structured foundation for strengthening institutional resilience, accountability, and trust in cloud-based learning environments.

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