What to Consider When Hiring a Computer Forensics Orlando Offers
Introduction
Are you seeking someone to assist with you for computer forensic services? Maybe your business believes that someone is committing fraudulent acts against your business and you need someone to assist with obtaining evidence and invest ting further. With today’s technologies vastly increasing, there are experts in a wide range of computer forensics required, including internet forensics, android and iphone forensics, Apple and Windows forensics, as well as for storage device forensics (thumb drives, DVDs, etc).
Today digital forensics is recognized as a science and requires an expert that understands the forensic investigation process that needs to be conducted in order to preserve, recover, and analyze digital data that would be presentable in a court of law. Those providing forensic services should have the educational and background experience to assist you with the process competently.
Whenever someone requires a digital forensics expert to be called out to conduct an investigation, there are a wide range of considerations that needs to be made. First off, the types of devices used and special software applications needs to be considered for digital forensics. Today, there are a wide range of physical devices, including mobile devices that needs to be considered. Additionally, there are a wide range of software applications that may require an expert that specializes within that field. For example, if mobile devices need to be investigated, then it may require a forensics expert that specializes within that field. Therefore, whenever considering a Computer Forensics Orlando specialist team or company, make sure you understand exactly what needs to be investigated so you can relay this information to them ahead of time so you can better determine if they have the correct expertise in assisting you. Many times, they may not be able to assist you, but a computer forensic business can refer you to another company that can assist with specific software or devices that need to be investigated.
Below you will learn about when you should consider hiring a computer forensics expert, the type of data that they can investigate as well as what you can expect time wise whenever needing a computer forensics expert to assist you.
When to Consider a Computer Forensics Expert?
Generally speaking, computer forensics can be considered a reactive science, meaning that computer forensic specialists are typically called in whenever there is a problem, such as when there is a civil lawsuit or criminal case requiring digital evidence. However, there may be cases when a computer forensics specialist will be called in to help find evidence to help support a civil or criminal case prior to a case even being filled, as most cases require enough evidence to validate someone to file one, which is often considered having “probable cause.” Businesses today require computer forensic experts in the circumstance that they believe fraudulent acts have been committed within the company, in which they may need to consider opening up either a civil or criminal case against potential suspects. Under these circumstances the digital forensics specialists may be called in to help determine if there were any fraudulent acts committed, and by whom they may have been committed by.
While computer forensic experts are often called upon for reactive purposes because they believe there is substantial evidence to warrant a case filling, sometimes it is better for forensic experts to be called to provide proactive services, such as helping businesses set up their IT system that helps better retain and preserve evidence. This can often be helpful because if the systems within businesses are better prepared on a proactive basis, it will be less time consuming and costly to conduct a potential future investigation.
Most Commonly Computer Forensics Investigated today
In order to give you a better understanding about what computer forensic experts often investigate today, below you will find some of the most common fields they are called to conduct investigations for. However, there are a wide variety of specialists that may often need to be considered, especially due to there being such a large variety of technologies that each business utilizes today.
Common Storage Devices Forensics Specialists Investigate
Because technology is consistently expanding, there are many types of storage devices that digital data can be stored on today. Because of this, it may require certain forensic experts to be called upon that have the knowledge and experience of conducting forensics on that particular storage device. However, below are the most common types of storage devices that data is stored on today that computer forensic specialists commonly investigate.
• Hard disc drives – These are the typical hard drives that computers and laptops have. These devices have been around for many years and are not difficult for computer forensic experts to investigate.
• Solid-State Drive – these are different from hard disc drives, as they contain an internal microchip for the purpose of being able to store data.
• Nand flash Memory –Typical devices that have solid-state drives include thumb drives, as well as mobile phone devices and tablets. Unlike hard disc drives, solid-state drives are not easy to remove and require advanced techniques in order to help preserve and restore data for investigation purposes.
Often individuals believe that when a file is deleted from the computer’s operating system, that it is permanently deleted from the hard drive. However, this is usually not the case. What actually happens is the file is actually removed from be accessed from the operating system itself, but the actual data from the file still exists on the hard drive. Whenever a file is deleted from the operating system, while the file still probably exists, the file may be later overwritten by the operating system when it later needs to store another file on the hard drive. Therefore, whenever needing to recover a deleted file, the sooner the hard drive is analyzed the more likely the file will exist.
Additionally, data from the file is often located in many other areas within the hard drive as well. Some common areas it can still be stored in include the page.sys file, which is a virtual memory storage located on the hard drive. Also, whenever a file is printed, it is often stored on the area of the hard drive that is reserved for the print queue, in which instance the file may still reside there if it was ever printed.
Understanding How E-mails Forensics Work
Email is the number one method that businesses communicate with today. When dealing with the server side of email forensics, it deals with many areas, including the server, the email client, headers, and the body message itself.
The server’s responsibility is to assist with storing the messages for the intended party to read, as well as for moving messages to their attended destinations. When dealing with messages that are sent in-house, messages will often only be stored and sent on one server. However, when dealing with sending messages outside of the business, messages are often being stored and sent to at least two servers. The two most popular technologies utilized today for receiving messages include POP and IMAP, while the technology that is often responsible for sending messages is SMTP.
The client is responsible for retrieving and storing messages, as well as for helping with the delivery process. The most commonly used client software used today with window’s based computers includes Outlook Express and Thunderbird. However, there are many types of email clients out on the market today. Another popular form of email is webmail. The most commonly used webmail applications include Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail.
The Amount of Time and Effort it Takes to Conduct a Forensics Investigation
If you ever have watched a movie or television shows that displays a forensics team using computer forensics (Such as CSI), it often shows them having the capability of retrieving and accessing data extremely quickly. However, this is simply not the case in the real world. The actual process of having to retrieve data and analyze it can sometimes take literally hundreds of hours.
The costs and time it takes to conduct computer forensic investigation will depend upon many different factors. Some major considerations include the type of devices that the data is stored on. As mentioned earlier, NAND flash storage devices (such as thumb drives and mobile device storage) will require someone with stronger expertise and will take a significant amount of time over retrieving data from devices from normal hard disk drives.
Before any type of investigation is conducted, it is important that the forensic specialist identify all relevant areas to investigate. For example, if fraudulent acts were committed using e-mail, then it is important that those potential custodians that would most likely have relevant evidence would need to be identified so that they are the only ones that are investigated. Other important factors take place within computer forensics that is often used with any type of legal investigation, including determining who has motive, identifying those that have close relationships with the business, as well as conducting further investigations once any small amount of evidence is found against a potential suspect. All these factors play a huge role in how much time it will take in the forensic investigation process.