New tool for Digital Forensics
07/20/2009In your average episode of CSI, it takes the police hours to analyze files on a suspects computer and recover any evidence. In the world outside of primetime television, this process can take much longer. Police departments being backlogged with a years worth of digital evidence to analyze and archive is not unheard of, according to comments made by the Metropolitan Police Department in London.
Dells solution to this problem, called Dell Digital Fortress, seeks to help police agencies analyze data more quickly so that more criminals can be brought to justice. The way the system works is police agencies will have access to a Dell workcenter where high-powered servers can analyze multiple devices simultaneously. This seems to be a vast improvement over the traditional method of analyzing police data by using individual work stations.
It is not enough for the data to simply be scanned and the relevant evidence extracted. The Dell Digital Forensics system will keep an untouched clone copy of the data within the workcenter so that police can track the handling of all evidence. Currently most police agencies burn data to DVDs to be stored with other physical evidence, but this is time consuming and not the most efficient way to store data.
In addition to the powerful computers that will be at police agencies disposable, Dell teams up with other companies to provide a bevy of useful software solutions. Intel, EMC Corp, Oracle Cop, Symantec Corp and AccessData partnered together to provide software tools to help the police search suspects digital devices.
As technology continues to prove itself as an indispensable part of our lifestyle, digital forensics is becoming an incredibly important field. Police agencies are striving to handle digital evidence just as efficiently as they handle physical evidence, keeping in mind that the quantity of the former will only continue to grow in coming years.
