by Mike Dickinson, Deputy Executive Officer at MSAB

The purpose of this paper is to encourage mobile forensic practitioners to consider a wider number of critical factors surrounding their choice and use of mobile forensic tools. Specifically, the quality of decoding, training of users and ultimately the preservation of digital as evidence in court proceedings.

Introduction

There is a tendency in the world of mobile forensic tools to focus on one thing: data acquisition.

Most users tend to focus on purchasing a tool that gets them access to the data. Makes sense, right? Not much point in doing anything else, if you can’t get the data in the first place, and we would agree. But it shouldn’t stop there. There are four critical factors to consider:

1. Accessing Data
2. Decoding Data
3. Data Integrity
4. Training Users

This white paper focuses on points 2, 3 & 4 on the assumption that point 1…