Faster Digital Forensic Analysis
Examining seized computers and devices for incriminating evidence is a slow and time-consuming process. Searching seized computers consumes valuable working time and delays the availability of evidence. Scanning through seized computers often delays an investigation and can cause an accumulation of unfinished work in digital forensic labs.
Cyan Forensics, a startup based in Edinburgh, Scotland, whose technology helps police investigators to find evidence faster, has secured a €1.5 million additional funding from a consortium of investors and is now developing a new set of digital forensic tools capable of scanning devices in a matter of minutes.
The software also helps accelerate processing, it can prioritise the analysis of devices that are known to contain illegal files.
The company’s software allows investigators to make quick and confident decision and helps prevent further crime ranging from terrorism to human trafficking. Within a matter of minutes, Cyan’s solution will be able to supply an investigator with enough evidence to confront suspects and know where to focus a full forensic investigation.
Automated scans using MD5 hashes of known illegal content, such as illegal images of children or terrorist handbooks, are a valuable tool for finding evidence quickly and minimising the need for forensic analyst time. Such scans take many hours, or even days on devices with high capacity storage or slow external interfaces.
The company’s website mentions that the technology works in three steps. The first step is the preparation stage, where the system extracts relevant information from a database.
So if the investigation is a terror investigation, the system will extract bomb-making guides or terrorist manifestos from the database. If a child sexual exploitation case is being investigated, then the extracted data from the database will likely be illegal images.
The next stage is the triage stage. The system is capable of filtering out files that almost definitely do not contain any contraband. This allows the system to scan seized computers, devices, and hard drives within minutes.
When traditional scanning methods would take 35 minutes to scan an 80 gigabyte hard drive, Cyan Forensics’ system would only take two minutes to scan. Similarly, it would take Cyan only 27 minutes to scan a terabyte of data, where it will take traditional scanners over 7 hours to scan.
The Cyan system provides tools that show rapid results allowing analysts to focus their investigative efforts on devices that are likely to contain incriminating evidence.The system provides investigators with a useful set of tools that help stop criminals and solve crimes.
Cyan Forensics: EU Startups: I-HLS:
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