Digital Forensics Tools

There are now many digital forensics tools available unlike just a few years ago. This is incredible since there were only a few a brief time ago. This shows the importance of this issue, namely that digital forensics is an effective tool in this realm of law enforcement.

These tools allow digital forensics experts/investigators/analysts the ability to recover previously-deleted information from a wide range of devices. For example, there are digital forensics tools that recover deleted information on computer hard drives, disks, diskettes, CDs, DVDs and so on. There are also software tools that specialize in retrieving data from a wide range of mobile devices from iPhones and Android phones to PDAs.

As an example, let's say that law enforcement has confiscated an iPhone fro ma perpetrator. They would like you to look on that phone and see if there is any incriminating data. So, you would select the appropriate forensics software (there are several). Then you would hook up a connector from that phone to your computer. You would then execute the forensics software tool. It will scan the data storage locations on the cellphone and then retrieve all data it can find, whether t is current data or previously-deleted data. Generally, most of these tools can retrieve most if not all the data stored on that phone, regardless whether it has been deleted by the user or not.

Week 3 Discussion

For this assignment, you must create an original post addressing the questions below, preferably prior on Wednesday.

Question:

Create an investigative toolkit. What tools would you have in your toolkit? Document the following:

* the features of each tool
* how much does each tool cost (if applicable)
* advantages/disadvantages