Edinburgh Napier University

  The effective management of digital evidence is critical to modern forensic investigations. However, traditional evidence management approaches are often prone to security and integrity issues. In recent years, the use of blockchain technology has emerged as a promising solution to enhance the security, transparency, and integrity of digital evidence. This systematic review critically evaluates the current state of research on blockchain-based chain of custody for digital evidence and its potential to transform the digital forensic community. By analysing papers from major databases, this study provides a bibliometric analysis of the research trends and opportunities for blockchain-based evidence management since 2015. The review highlights the benefits of blockchain technology in providing an immutable and decentralised structure for documenting and auditing evidence trails. Additionally, this research identifies the challenges and limitations of implementing a blockchain-based chain of custody and presents practical and scalable solutions for overcoming these challenges at Big Data scale.