Mobile communications devices — from basic cell phones to advanced Personal Digital Assistants such as the BlackBerry or the iPhone — have become ubiquitous. Around the clock and around the world, these devices collect detailed information on the user’s communications, location, data storage, and web activity: from calendar items to photos, from Internet browsing history to mobile navigation records, from emails to e-docs, and from social networking posts to Internet searches and cell phone history. Because these devices often contain hundreds, if not thousands, of relevant items, they are increasingly becoming a standard source of data to be explored in internal investigations, civil litigation, and criminal matters.
Mobile devices present special challenges to the digital forensic analyst. Proprietary operating systems, differing firmware implementations, changing network communication protocols, and evolving data storage methods all represent unique issues for the analyst seeking to uncover the data within the mobile device’s memory. The forensics treatment of a mobile device is a highly specialized area, a subset of traditional electronic forensics requiring skill and knowledge above and beyond the basic digital forensic training methodology. Effective analysis of mobile devices demands first-hand knowledge. Without this knowledge, skill, and experience, serious errors can occur during the forensics process; in the worst case scenarios, critical data could be obliterated, putting litigation outcomes in jeopardy.
Stroz Friedberg is a global leader in mobile device forensics, with staff who are world-renowned in the discipline and who are at the forefront of developing new methodologies to successfully process the very latest mobile devices. In fact, members of our staff were highly influential in the development of the best practices guidelines relating to mobile device forensics: The U.K. Association of Chief Police Officers’ (ACPO) Good Practice Guide for Computer-Based Electronic Evidence is the globally recognized Standard of Practice and is also referenced in the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Mobile Device Forensics Guidelines.
Our firm applies renowned skills, knowledge, and experience during forensic preservation to ensure that there is minimal impact on the memory of the device and that all processes comply at a minimum with industry best practice. Care is taken to appropriately isolate such devices from cellular networks, which in turn prevents data loss. Our field-proven expertise ensures that all available data is using strict internal guidelines that maintain the evidential integrity of the data.