What is Digital Forensics?
So what is digital forensics? Digital forensics is a process of taking any electronic device. It could be a computer. It could be a phone. It could be a mobile device. It could be a tablet. It could even be a vehicle. Anything with computerized memory in it and extracting out records from that device. Every device has a way to keep records. Even things like your modem or your router at your house is keeping track of all the web traffic, all the internet visitors, all of the even text messages when you’re at your house using your phone, your phone goes through your router at your house.
The Deep Dive Process
So digital forensics is a matter of taking that device and either with software or with hardware or even with manual inspection extracting out the records to get beyond what you just see on the screen. Look, when you have your cell phone, there’s certain things you see on the screen. You see your apps, you see your programs, you might see your email, your text messages, but there are many things that you can’t see on your screen. Even deleted files are still in that phone. If you have a computer in that computer, there are files that you’ve deleted a year ago that are still hiding in there. You just can’t see them on the screen. So digital forensics is a matter of doing a deep dive using sophisticated software, sophisticated hardware and a method of investigation that takes the data and reconstructs.
Data Reconstruction and Recovery
That’s it. Back into observable, viewable, readable records. It could be old text messages. It could be voicemail messages. Look, when you have a voicemail message on your phone and you hit delete, it doesn’t actually delete the message. It just takes it out of visibility from your phone. That message still could be in your phone. It could be with your sale provider.
Vehicle Digital Records
Vehicles keep a lot of records. It tells the computer if the doors open, if the doors closed, if somebody’s sitting on the passenger seat, it has to know that because the airbag will be activated. So if you need to know if somebody was riding in a car in the passenger seat or if the driver was by themselves alone, you can find that out from digital forensics.
Comprehensive Digital Investigation
Almost anything you could think of is stored in a computer somewhere. So, if you do need to get more information beyond what you can see with your own eyes, on the screen, on a computer, on a phone, consider using digital forensics as an investigation to extract from your internet router, your wifi router, maybe even if you have a security camera or security system in your house to know when doors are open and closed. Any type of information that’s recorded can be looked for using digital forensics on a computer with hardware to get the answers and intel that you need.
