What is Digital Forensics?
Digital Forensics is defined as the process of preservation, identification, extraction, and documentation of computer evidence that can be used by the court of law. It is the science of finding evidence from digital media like a computer, mobile phone, server, or network. It provides the forensic team with the best techniques and tools to solve complicated digital-related cases.
Digital Forensics helps the forensic team to analyze, inspect, identify, and preserve the digital evidence residing on various types of electronic devices.
Objectives of computer forensics
Here are the essential objectives of using Computer forensics:
It helps to recover, analyze, and preserve computer and related materials in such a manner that it helps the investigation agency to present them as evidence in a court of law.
It helps to postulate the motive behind the crime and the identity of the main culprit.
Designing procedures at a suspected crime scene helps you to ensure that the digital evidence obtained is not corrupted.
Data acquisition and duplication: Recovering deleted files and deleted partitions from digital media to extract the evidence and validate them.
Helps you to identify the evidence quickly, and also allows you to estimate the potential impact of the malicious activity on the victim
Producing a computer forensic report which offers a complete report on the investigation process.
Preserve the evidence by following the chain of custody.
Process of Digital forensics
Digital forensics entails the following steps:
Identification
Preservation
Analysis
Documentation
Presentation
Types of Digital Forensics
Three types of digital forensics are:
Disk Forensics:
It deals with extracting data from storage media by searching active, modified, or deleted files.
Network Forensics:
It is a sub-branch of digital forensics. It is related to monitoring and analysis of computer network traffic to collect important information and legal evidence.
Wireless Forensics:
It is a division of network forensics. The main aim of wireless forensics is to offer the tools need to collect and analyze the data from wireless network traffic.
Database Forensics:
It is a branch of digital forensics relating to the study and examination of databases and their related metadata.
Malware Forensics:
This branch deals with the identification of malicious code, to study their payload, viruses, worms, etc.
Email Forensics
Deals with recovery and analysis of emails, including deleted emails, calendars, and contacts.
Memory Forensics:
It deals with collecting data from system memory (system registers, cache, RAM) in raw form and then carving the data from Raw dump.
Mobile Phone Forensics:
It mainly deals with the examination and analysis of mobile devices. It helps to retrieve phone and SIM contacts, call logs, incoming, and outgoing SMS/MMS, Audio, videos, etc.
Example Uses of Digital Forensics
In recent times, commercial organizations have used digital forensics in following a type of cases:
Intellectual Property theft
Industrial espionage
Employment disputes
Fraud investigations
Inappropriate use of the Internet and email in the workplace
Forgeries related matters
Bankruptcy investigations
Issues concern with the regulatory compliance
Advantages of Digital forensics
Here, are the pros/benefits of Digital forensics
To ensure the integrity of the computer system.
To produce evidence in the court, which can lead to the punishment of the culprit.
It helps the companies to capture important information if their computer systems or networks are compromised.
Efficiently tracks down cybercriminals from anywhere in the world.
Helps to protect the organization’s money and valuable time.
Allows to extract, process, and interpret the factual evidence, so it proves the cybercriminal action’s in the court.
Disadvantages of Digital Forensics
Here, are major cos/ drawbacks of using Digital Forensic
Digital evidence accepted into court. However, it is must be proved that there is no tampering
Producing electronic records and storing them is an extremely costly affair
Legal practitioners must have extensive computer knowledge
Need to produce authentic and convincing evidence
If the tool used for digital forensic is not according to specified standards, then in the court of law, the evidence can be disapproved by justice.
Lack of technical knowledge by the investigating officer might not offer the desired result
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