Digital forensics in Egypt: a scoping review of legal frameworks, tool validation, and admissibility challenges in cybercrime investigations

Abstract Background Egypt’s rapid shift to digital services has led to an increase in cybercrime, making digital forensic evidence crucial for modern criminal investigations. This study examines the current state of digital forensics in Egypt, focusing on the legal, technical, and procedural challenges that affect the collection, validation, and use of digital evidence in court. Main body Guided by the PRISMA-ScR framework, the review maps the literature published between 1993 and 2025, covering forensic science, law, and new digital technologies. To maintain analytical clarity, the synthesis distinguishes among statutory provisions in Egyptian law, empirical and survey-based findings in the literature, and comparative evaluations against international benchmarks. The analysis highlights how Egypt’s Law No. 175 of 2018 on information technology crimes is applied, particularly regarding evidence integrity, chain-of-custody practices, and the judicial evaluation of digital evidence. The literature suggests a gap between legal objectives and documented forensic practice, with one major issue identified in existing academic studies being the lack of national standards for validating digital forensic tools, particularly those that use artificial intelligence. Common tools are frequently reported, but their use is not consistently linked to frameworks such as ISO/IEC 27037. Other challenges reported by the empirical literature include limited institutional resources, a lack of specialized training, problems with handling data across borders, and only partial alignment with international data protection laws. Conclusion This study highlights the need for standardized forensic procedures, tool validation, and flexible regulatory frameworks to improve the credibility and reliability of digital forensic evidence in Egypt.