Dell on March 24 started
shipping a new ruggedized laptop with special features designed specifically
for forensic evidence collection by law enforcement or scientific specialists.
The Mobile Digital Forensic
package, based on the company's location-based Digital Forensics product, is
aimed at providing easier and more secure collection and storage of digital
evidence at crime scenes or at scientific work sites.
The laptop package includes
software for speedy analysis of forensic reports following the collection of
digital image, document, audio and video files.
The new product runs on
Dell’s Latitude E6400 XFR rugged laptop, which has been designed for use in
rough circumstances and is equipped with SPEKTOR Forensic Intelligence software
from Evidence Talks, one of the U.K.'s digital forensic and intelligence-gathering
firms, Joe Trickey, Dell's brand manager for digital forensics, told eWEEK.
Dell Brings in Corporate Resources
Trickey said that Dell brought
its corporate resources, including virtualization and storage compression
software, to help manage storage issues in the XFR.
The XFR features a multi-format
card reader, USB key ports, a CD reader, and various collector devices for
facilitating the connection of cameras, recorders and other devices.
Dell’s original Digital
Forensics is a suite of hardware, storage, software and services that
centralizes the process of handling seized data, thus increasing the
productivity of digital forensic experts with the ultimate goal of improving
success rates for solving cases.
"The average
investigation takes up 2.2 terabytes of gathered digital information,"
Trickey said. "This certainly includes video and images, but also emails,
text messages, documents—anything related to the case."
For example, in the case of
a disappearance of a spouse, law enforcement agents would use the device to
collect digital evidence about where the couple might have gone and what they
may have done, in addition to photographs, GPS records, email, text messages and
phone records, Trickey said.
All that data needs to be
stored and indexed, Trickey said. Other use cases for this type of package
include research on terrorist activities, tracking down pedophiles and computer
system hackers and perpetrators of online fraud.
Trickey admitted that the
2.2TB average amount of data seems high, but he pointed out that this kind of
legal evidence cannot be deduplicated for legal reasons. The evidence all must
be stored in its raw state—whether there are duplicate copies of files or not.
"You can't change the
content; if you do, it wouldn't hold up in a court of law, because you've lost
something. It's got to stay in its pristine state and maintain chain of
custody," Trickey said.
Tracking Evidence Not an Easy Order
Keeping track of all the
evidence in a case has been a longtime problem for forensics people. Trickey
said the XFR solves these issues.
"As you can imagine,
these kinds of collections tend to pile up in a backlog," Trickey said.
"Customers were coming to us and saying, 'This is becoming unmanageable;
how can you help us?'"
The new forensics package
uses forensics-related applications from AccessData, EMC, Intel, Oracle,
Symantec, VEGA and others.
Pricing information is
available upon consultation, Trickey said.
Dell's XFR features a multi-format
card reader, USB key ports, a CD reader, and various collector devices.
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