Essay Example. Documenting and Reporting

The computer investigators have to document all the activities undertaken during the entire process. The investigators also have to document the approaches used to acquire, examine, and assess the evidence. This helps in ensuring that the integrity of data has been preserved and that all the policies and procedures have been followed (Hamm, 2017). Proper documentation of the data helps in proving the validity of the evidence. In computer investigation, the data should be saved in digital format and stored in proper archives. This helps in establishing when, where, and how the data serving as evidence was recovered. It also helps in matching the evidence with activities that occurred on particular timelines.

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Companies Involved in the Computer Investigation Process

Atola Technology

This is a company that offers complex data retrieval services as well as providing utilities and tools for manually accessing the hard drives. Atola Insight Forensic is software that is provided by the Company to help in the retrieval of data. The system is developed by highly experienced data recovery engineers who closely work with the law enforcement agencies as well as global investigating experts. The tool is designed to support retrieval of the damaged file as well as non-damaged media which is acquired faster as compared to when using any other equipment. Apart from being the fastest and the ability to retrieved data from damaged drives, the imaging solution facilitates ATA extraction of the password, Hash calculation, diverse erasure methods as well as a hardware write blocker.

R3Digital Forensics

This is a digital forensics service company based in Austin, Texas, in the United States of America. The firm helps in the identification, recovery, preservation as well as analysis of relevant data to maximize value for its customers. R3 helps in retrieving data from drives, analyzing it, and producing it to the customer (Xu, Zhang, Ren, & Kim, 2018). Additionally, the Company provides expert testimony on issues related to computer forensics as well as present report on retrieved documents, data breaches, computer hacking as well as theft of intellectual property. Through the evidence provided by the fir, customers are able to achieve their goal. The Company also offers solutions for customers who have audio recordings, which are difficult to understand (Xu, Zhang, Ren, & Kim, 2018). The Company can restore and enhance audio recordings from old cassette tapes, voicemail recordings, police radio recordings, answering machines, among others. The firm acts as a special master upon appointment by both the state and the federal government. They, therefore, acts as an independent party that does not favor any party in case of dispute by providing data while maintaining the confidentiality of personal data.

Access Data

This is a company that was established more than 30years ago with the aim of ensuring that customers get effective and efficient computer investigations while at the same time reducing the cost and protecting the data regardless of what type of data it is (Hamm, 2017). The firm provides digital investigations that help in establishing what happened concerning the investigated matter. The firm provides tools that effectively analyze computers, mobile devices, as well as communication networks. They also help in the collection of data and analysis.

Risk and compliance are guaranteed by the Company by, for example, deleting dangerous files, stopping non-compliant activities as well as killing the processes (Hamm, 2017). AccessData is a proven partner for public sector organizations, law firms, as well as corporations. The Company ensures that it abides by international standards when undertaking the computer investigation process. While improving effectiveness and efficiency, the Company ensures that data security is promoted. Thus they strike a balance between evidence collection and protection of privacy rights.

Technology Involved in the Computer Investigation Process

Computer forensics have embraced different types of technologies to help the experts in their investigations depending on the area and technologies being investigated. Computer forensic investigations entail uncovering evidence of crimes committed using technologies to help the investigators understand how the crime was committed (Cummings, 2019). Technology advancement help experts in their forensic work but also has increased crimes being committed as more people embrace technologies. Technologies involved in forensic computer investigations include GPS that uses satellites to establish the location of gadget of person being tracked. There are crimes that are committed and the person runs therefore computer forensics experts are involved in tracking the technology item stolen, the experts use GPS satellite to identify the location of the person (Cummings, 2019). Gps forensics is mainly used to investigate crimes where there are security measures taken to secure an item such as computers and mobile phones from theft.

Another technology used in computer forensics include rapid identification systems that allow the experts to search specific information from a database that has more information. The identification system uses biometrics such as facial recognition, fingerprints and iris recognition to match information of individuals that is contained in a database which is critical in computer crime investigation (Cummings, 2019). There is huge amount of data that is collected daily by different organizations hence the rapid identification system helps in sorting the information when specific data is being searched.

Another technology being used in computer forensic investigations include robotic cameras that are used to identify people through visual recognition. The technology is mainly used in criminal justice system where the police and investigators place robotic cameras in the street where people pass to identify suspect through face recognition (Cummings, 2019). The cameras are linked to a system that has a database containing many photos of suspects that are being sought by police. The cameras also collect data and do surveillance by monitoring activities done in the streets. Robotic cameras are able to keep track of suspects by monitoring their activities and how they commit different types of crimes. The cameras are also able to do vehicle surveillance to monitor how the vehicles move on different roads and the traffic offenses that they commit.

Another technology used in computer forensics include dtSearch technology that is used by forensic experts to examine and reduce the time taken when searching huge amounts of information. The technology helps in hashing, imaging, indexing data on drivers and searching specific information from storage media devices. dtSearch technology is able to search different formats of data such as PDF, HTML and PST formats from a single source data storage (Cummings, 2019). The investigators get the opportunity to resolve conflicts based on data findings from the search done. Identifying documents of different formats is a major challenge affecting computer investigation that the technology solves.

Future trends

The future of technologies used in computer forensic investigations that will be able to handle the new trends of computer crimes that are increasingly evolving. There are few technologies that are being used in computer investigations to investigate crimes committed. The future technologies will facilitate investigators to handle international crimes where computer crimes are committed by people from other states. New types of crimes are emerging therefore technologies are required to facilitate the investigations of the crimes committed. The new technologies also need to have the capacity to un-encrypt information for the purpose of finding facts on encrypted information.