Top Forensics Tools for Business
Computer or digital forensics is an extremely fast growing and important industry. Digital crimes are becoming more and more commonplace, and organizations need quick and reliable tools to gather and provide digital evidence. Computer forensic teams, whether they are from an organization’s internal team, or from a law enforcement unit, require certain items in their forensic toolkits.
Drive acquisition is a fundamental process in the field of digital forensics, but the acquisition of an entire hard drive must be a forensically sound image that is a flat file bit stream image. Volatile data is extremely valuable evidence that can easily be lost, as it is data that is stored in RAM, a Window’s page file, or other repository that is wiped clean when a computer is shutoff. Both of these items need to have their accuracy guaranteed through hashing, which is basically a digital signature from the original hard drive or volatile data that is matched to the exact mirror image backup of that data. If these hashes do not match, the copy of the data is not considered to be a true, forensically sound copy of the original data.
The following table summarizes details of a handful of the top forensic tools on the market today.
|
Forensic Tool |
Type of Data Searched |
Features |
Cost |
| Forensic Toolkit (FTK) by AccessData |
|
|
$2,995 as of 5/1/2008 |
| Helix3 Enterprise by E-fense Carpe Datum |
|
|
Former versions were free and open-source, version 3 requires users to contact for individual quote. |
| EnCase Forensic by Guidance Software |
|
|
$3,600 for a corporate license, plus support.
$2,850 for a government/law enforcement license, plus support. |
| EnCase Enterprise by Guidance Software |
|
|
From $25,000 for 1,000 workstations |
| P2 Enterprise Shuttle Edition by Paraben Corporation |
|
|
$6,995, plus support, as of 4/1/2007 |
| P2 Enterprise Edition by Paraben Corporation |
|
|
Requires users to contact for individual quote. |
| ProDiscover® Investigator by Technology Pathways, LLC |
|
|
$ 9,995.00 for a single user license, law enforcement and government receive a discount upon contacting. |
Based on the various features and types of data searched, if a company were to purchase just one of these tools, it would have to be P2 Enterprise Edition (P2EE) by Paraben Corporation. P2EE offers all of the required functions and features for most forensic teams, while also giving an organization the tools it needs to be proactive in monitoring and storing digital evidence.
However, if an organization truly had no budget limitation, it should purchase:
- P2 Enterprise Edition by Paraben Corporation
- Forensic Toolkit (FTK) by AccessData
- EnCase Enterprise from Guidance Software
FTK provides numerous features that P2EE does not, such as recovering passwords from a plethora of applications, as well as steganography, which many terrorist and child pornography rings use to avoid detection. EnCase Enterprise is very similar to PS Enterprise Edition, so it may simply be overkill to have both, but a larger company should definitely consider it since the cost of running both would be minimal compared to the consequences of one missing something that the other may catch.
By combining these three forensic suites, a digital forensic team would be able to accurately track, monitor, gather, and report digital evidence to any law enforcement or organization that requires it, both proactively and reactively.
Sources:
- http://www.accessdata.com/forensictoolkit.html
- http://www.e-fense.com/h3-enterprise.php
- http://www.guidancesoftware.com/products/ef_index.aspx
- http://www.paraben-enterprise.com
- http://www.paraben-enterprise.com/p2es.html
- http://www.paraben-enterprise.com/p2ee.html
- http://www.techpathways.com
- http://www.techpathways.com/prodiscoverin.htm
- http://www.scmagazineus.com/Forensic-Toolkit-v20/Review/2380/
- http://www.scmagazineus.com/Paraben-P2-Enterprise-Shuttle/Review/78/
- http://www.paraben-forensics.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=25&products_id=369&osCsid=2ba225bcdf31dd81d958f939efd173d3
- http://www.techpathways.com/order.htm
- http://www.scmagazineus.com/Guidance-Software-EnCase-Forensic-v-6/Review/159/
- http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2002_August_1/ai_89956939/








April 30th, 2010 at 1:10 am
Forensic tools are necessary to recover data back. It’s real use to solve cyber mysteries and cyber crime. Thanks for providing all the sources.
May 4th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Thanks for the input and kind words. I checked out your site and it has some really good articles on computer security. -365