It’s no secret that nearly every home has a computer or cell phone. As people continue to increase their reliance on electronic devices like a computer, laptop, cell phone and tablet they also leave behind the places they visit on the internet, their emails, as well as their conversations. Because of this, many law enforcement agencies and attorneys are using legal discovery services to retrieve this information and use it as evidence in court cases.
In addition, private businesses are also now taking notice of its benefits and using this as a way to prevent intellectual property theft, industrial espionage and fraud.
What is Digital Forensics?
Digital Forensics works much the same as forensics, wherein a person or group of people search and gather evidence against a person to use for a trial. The difference between digital forensics is that you are dealing with electronic data. A qualified person searches through the computer or other electronic device and retrieves evidence in its original form as a copy. They must search through seemingly endless files to reconstruct prior events and preserve the evidence so that it is admissible in court. This is a time-consuming and painstaking process that can take up to several months to retrieve the desired information.
Stored data retrieved
When it comes to your computer or cell phone, everything you do and every action you take is recorded and stored. Even if you delete a file it still remains intact on the hard drive. People who work with computers know how to retrieve it, and use similar methods like those used when you incur a hard drive failure, lost files or even the deadly blue screen. Law enforcement agencies, attorneys and business owners must explain in detail the information they need retrieved. Then it’s up to the qualified and trained individuals to use extra care in recovering material from the hard drive so that it helps with a case and removes all doubt about the authenticity.
Advantages of Digital Forensics
Sometimes the only hardcore evidence in a civil or criminal case is the information found on someone’s computer. By getting inside and recovering the information undamaged, attorneys can use it in court to prove their case and convict felons instead of the court deciding to set them free due to a lack of evidence. Digital forensics can aid in solving crimes like child pornography, identity theft, and a breach of contract, as well as corporate fraud and murder trials.
Leaving a trail of evidence behind
Everywhere you go and everything you do on your computer saves to the hard drive. The good news is that most people think that once they hit the delete button or close a window the information disappears. Because of this attorneys are able to hire an outside digital forensic service to acquire the stored information and prove their cases against defendants in both civil and criminal court.
As technology continues to take you into the future and into unchartered territories with the development of new amazing electronic devices, the technicians behind the scenes will continue to play a vital role in helping to retrieve valuable stored information that can literally make or break a case against a criminal.