Forensic Workstations / Forensic Loaders

Did you know PrimeArray systems products have been helping law enforcement agencies—from small to large—streamline their digital forensics operations for decades? Our products make extracting evidence from various media formats easy!

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What Is Digital Forensics?

Digital forensics is the practice of identifying, acquiring, and analyzing electronic evidence. Today, almost all criminal activity has a digital component, and digital forensics experts provide critical assistance to police investigations. Digital forensic data is commonly used in court proceedings.

An important part of digital forensics is the analysis of suspected cyberattacks, with the objective of identifying, mitigating, and eradicating cyber threats. It is also useful in the aftermath of an attack, providing information for auditors, legal teams, or law enforcement.

Electronic evidence can be gathered from computers, mobile devices, remote storage, IoT devices, and virtually any computerized system.

Why Is Digital Forensics Important?

Digital forensics impacts society broadly. Computers and devices are used in every aspect of life, making digital evidence critical for solving crimes and legal issues in both digital and physical worlds.

All connected devices generate massive amounts of data, logging user actions and autonomous device activities, including cars, mobile phones, routers, PCs, traffic lights, and more.

Digital evidence is used for:

• Data theft and network breaches: Understand how a breach happened and who the attackers were.
• Online fraud and identity theft: Assess the impact of breaches on organizations and customers.
• Violent crimes (burglary, assault, murder): Capture evidence from mobile phones, cars, and other nearby devices.
• White collar crimes: Collect evidence to prosecute corporate fraud, embezzlement, and extortion.

Branches of Digital Forensics

• Computer Forensics: Investigates computers and digital storage evidence, preserving a clear legal audit trail.
• Mobile Device Forensics: Recovers evidence from devices with memory and communication functionality (phones, tablets, GPS).
• Network Forensics: Monitors and analyzes network activities, usually proactively due to the volatile nature of network data.

Digital Forensic Process

Digital forensics follows a structured process: identifying, preserving, analyzing, documenting, and reporting evidence.

• Identification: Define investigation goals, identify evidence types, and devices.
• Preservation: Ensure data is isolated and preserved securely.
• Analysis: Systematically search for relevant evidence and draw conclusions.
• Documentation: Record all evidence with photos, sketches, and crime scene mapping.
• Reporting: Summarize findings and methodologies according to forensics protocols.

Types of Digital Evidence

Digital evidence is any data collected from electronic storage, wireless networks, or RAM. Examples include:

• Media files (photo, video, audio)
• User account data (usernames, passwords, avatars)
• Emails (content, sender/receiver info, attachments)
• Web browser history
• Phone calls (audio/video)
• Databases
• Accounting program files
• Windows registry and RAM files
• Text, spreadsheets, PDFs, bookmarks, etc.
• Networking device logs
• ATM transaction logs
• GPS logs
• Electronic door logs
• CCTV recordings
• Hidden/encrypted data
• Printer, fax, copy logs
• Computer backups

Digital Forensics & Cybersecurity Tools

Investigators rely on modern digital forensics tools to securely, efficiently, and lawfully retrieve evidence from devices.

Criteria for selecting tools:

• Affordability: Many are open-source and free.
• Accessibility: Available to individuals, not just law enforcement.
• Accountability: Vetting through open-source projects or expert testimonials.

Featured Tools:

Autopsy: Graphical digital forensics platform for timeline analysis, hash filtering, keyword search, web artifact extraction, and deleted file recovery. Runs in parallel for speed. Open-source, Windows only.

Bulk Extractor: Scans files, directories, or disk images without parsing file systems, faster than average tools. Supports social network forensics, credit card extraction, URLs, histograms, and word lists. Available free for Windows/Linux.

Computer-Aided Investigative Environment (PrimeArray): Full-scale forensic platform integrating multiple tools with a user-friendly interface. Covers preservation, collection, examination, and analysis. Linux-based and open-source.