Dell Digital Forensics set to solve information harvesting headaches

Dell is hoping to cut down on the time taken to solve cyber security problems and improve forensic investigations with the launch of a mobile digital forensics system.

The firm said that the new digital forensics system will streamline evidence collection, and has been designed to analyse digital devices and their content.

A new hard-wearing laptop with forensic analysis software can be used at incident scenes, which means that any equipment can be looked at without being moved.

This will preserve the integrity of equipment and speed up evidence collection while removing the risk of corruption, according to Dell.

"The amount of stored digital evidence is estimated to double every 18 to 24 months, and the evidence collected from these devices is used in all forms of investigation," said Troy West, vice president and general manager for Dell's public sector business.

"This solution enables forensic teams to collect information quickly and effectively, and conduct on-scene triage to help mitigate the need to handle items that have no relevance to the investigation."

Dell is offering the rugged Latitude E6400 XFR laptop for use in mobile investigations, and said that it could be plugged into any hardware, including PCs, laptops, smartphones, external memory drives and USB devices.

Dell is using software called SPEKTOR for the forensic studies and data collection, which uses a digital triage method for discovering what hardware might contain data worthy of investigation.

"We have found the SPEKTOR forensic product to be very easy to use and to perform better than expected," said Detective John McDowell of the Plant City Police Department in Florida.

"I used the product on a smartphone and was able to obtain all of the information I needed to include emails, text messages, phone calls and pics. I was very happy to find a single product which would extract that much information from a phone."