The number of crimes involving electronic data is sky-rocketing these days, particularly with the immense preponderance of computers and other digital media in our lives. Thus, data forensics has become a distinct sub-division of forensics science consisting of technical expertise, the finding of electronic evidence, digital investigations and even data recovery. Data forensics is right to use in judicial cases that involve breach of contract, intellectual property theft, discrimination, sexual harassment and so on. Therefore, only data forensics experts can search computers for electronic evidence, make digital investigations, recover lost data and provide technical expertise involving fcomputers’ ubiquity.
A normal type of computer investigation cannot detect or extract bits of information remained after deletion. File left-overs, deleted files, hidden and discarded files are searched and analyzed as part of the data forensics analysis. Although there are lots of challenges when trying to identify the criminal process or to recover data, experts in this fields have more than once been successful at finding the needle in the haystack. What is the relevance of such evidence for legal cases? Well, it has been proved by practice that the recovery of a deleted e-mail message can change the course of a trial.
The challenges that data forensics expert have to face are enormous. The applications are indeed far-reaching, but the work to extract digital evidence is strict and exhausting. Sometimes the necessary information is buried deep in the corporate electronic system, or sometimes, even if it is physically identifiable it is difficult to separate and analyze extensively, off line. Moreover, for a successful data collection, data forensics has to protect the extracted elements by duplication so that the information is preserved and not altered and spoiled during the process. Lots of skills, strict standards and great caution are required for each of these steps and only the best in the field can succeed.
When a criminal act involving digital systems is detected, the best way of action is not to address the other party and ask for a preservation of computer records, but rather a surgical approach by an expert who has had computer forensics training. This will reduce the costs of data collection and will make info recovery more likely. Moreover, it is false to assume that data forensics only applies to computer hard drives as the main systems that can store information; there are cases of criminal action involving, USB devices, CDs, DVDs and even voice mail systems. Even photocopy machines include hard drives and the scanned or copied documents can be afterwards retrieved from them.
