Mobile Forensics for Law Enforcement

Cell phone Forensics for law enforcement holds tremendous potential in uncovering evidence which can be used in a court of law to prosecute criminals. Even though, guidelines to proper handling of cell phones from a forensics perspective are not clearly defined, the need for solutions in this field is widely accepted. People committing crimes were among first to adopt the cell phone technology due to its ability to enable communication anytime anywhere. Mobile devices also uphold a significant amount of personal information: from call logs to contacts, music, pictures, ringtones and video – data which can play an incriminatory role in the investigation process. These are just few user case scenarios.

Mobile forensics tools help detectives and investigators to acquire information from cell phones right away without the need to wait for lab reports. Most of tools currently in the market, offer similar functionalities but their phone support largely varies. The more phone support is provided, the more dependable such a tool is. Imagine that you are off-site and you have just a few minutes available to acquire data from the suspect’s cell phone. If the tool you carry doesn’t support the respective cell phone model, you will find yourself in the grave situation of not being able to read the data from the device.
End of story.

Primarily, cell phone forensics tools should exhibit the following features:

• - Support as many phones and mobile content types as possible

• - Incorporate Hash signature and audit trail to prove that data has not been tampered with

   

Besides such tools, mobile operators also play a very important role in the cell phone forensics industry. They are able to pinpoint most precisely where a mobile phone is located at a particular time. Error varies with the proximity to the tower.