Streamlining Your Digital Evidence Management: Tips and Tricks
According to Vantage Market Research’s 2022 forensic technologies market study, the worldwide forensics industry is estimated to produce roughly $27,705 million by 2028. Because of the world’s continual, dynamic technological improvements, this figure makes sense.
Digital forensic examinations are triggered by specific occurrences in corporate settings. These incidents include unusual network or server behavior, industrial espionage, cyberattacks, infringement of intellectual property, bankruptcy investigations, and industry compliance audits. The term “digital evidence” refers to the sort of equipment being examined. This can range from user account information to electronic door logs.
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The few best practices for managing digital evidence successfully and securely are :
Have The Right Systems In Place
The first consideration should be to ensure that your digital evidence management system is of high quality. The right systems make it simple to centralize your evidence, make data sharing easier and more secure, and help you keep everything organized in general.
Moreover, check your system regularly to ensure that it can accept all devices and new forms of storage. Keep in mind that technology changes at a breakneck pace, and that new best practices are constantly being developed.
Attempting to do all of this without such a system that streamlines and centralizes things will be extremely difficult and practically impossible to keep things in order. Disorganized evidence can cause a slew of issues later on, so it’s best to avoid it completely.
Chain Of Custody
Your chain of custody is simply a chronological record of how evidence was handled, collected, and analyzed. These records should be flawless, and you should be able to simply search for who has dealt with which piece of evidence and when that interaction occurred.
When it is unclear who was in the custody of evidence at what time, it can often hinder evidence from being usable in a lawsuit. While recording the chain of custody on paper is acceptable, you will most likely want it digitally as well. This is a very crucial aspect in maintaining the integrity of evidence while avoiding any unwarranted tampering.
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Keep Devices Secure And Isolated
Today, most of an organization’s digital evidence can be discovered on devices such as cell phones, tablets, and PCs. As a result, you must guarantee that all devices containing evidence are kept safe. Access to software and hardware systems should be restricted to authorized individuals.
You must keep things digitally segregated in addition to keeping gadgets secure and safe. That could be disastrous if the gadget is linked to the Internet (through Wi-Fi or cable) or another device. There is a lot of room for human error when it comes to data, and you don’t want someone mistakenly deleting or copying something that messes up the metadata you’re attempting to maintain.
Automation and Analytics
Digital evidence can be held in one or more clouds, on-premises, or a combination of the two. Scalability, advanced analytics, easy data sharing, and increased workflows are all possible when digital evidence, data, and video analytics are all accessible within a secure multi-cloud or on-premise environment.
The footage, for example, can be instantly fed into the evidence system for more effective investigation, police resource allocation, and record keeping.
As the volume of information grows, proactive prompting in a multi-cloud or on-premise environment will become increasingly vital in assisting investigators in staying on top of the unprecedented volume of available evidence to increase case resolvability and investigative effectiveness.
Automatic File Quality Automation
File quality can be automatically optimized using digital evidence management software. It encodes and transcodes files into a variety of formats and resolutions, regardless of the video source (bodycams, CCTVs, etc.).
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When you upload a file, it is instantly transformed into several resolutions ranging from 144p to 4k. With many versions in various resolutions, you may watch the files in great quality regardless of your internet connection or device.
Conclusion
In today’s law enforcement world, digital evidence can come from a variety of sources and in a wide range of formats. Video and photographs can come from the general population, cops’ dash cams or body cameras, CCTV, and a variety of other sources. Even watching footage can be difficult with over 3,000 video formats in use by the CCTV sector alone.
Industries of every sphere must implement a secure and organized approach towards digital evidence management as one never knows when this could prevent a catastrophe waiting to happen.
