Government Computer News
Government’s cyberinvestigators look for a little help from industry
The discipline of digital forensics is quickly becoming more professional as standards are established and courts are beginning to require that evidence be processed only in certified laboratories.
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But professionalism does not come cheap. In fact, “it’s tremendously expensive,” said Jim Christy of the Defense Department’s Cyber Crime Center, which runs the nation’s largest certified digital forensics lab.
Christy told an audience of security professionals Wednesday at the Black Hat Federal Briefings in Arlington, Va., that keeping up certification for the lab, its personnel and its hardware and software accounts for up to 40 percent of the lab’s overhead. Faced with these requirements and the challenge of processing rapidly growing volumes of data, the Cyber Crime Center needs industry’s help.
“One of the reasons I’m here is to appeal to the vendors to crate the tools and processes to help us process the evidence in a timely manner,” Christy said.
One of the greatest needs is tools for testing and evaluating hardware and software used in the lab.
Digital forensics is the discipline of analyzing and preparing digital evidence in criminal investigations. Christy is a pioneer in computer crime investigation, with more than 30 years experience in the field. When he began, there were no standards or guidelines for how to gather and handle this data. Today it is a structured and increasingly regulated field. In 2003, the American Society of Crime Lab Directors set standards for certifying digital forensics labs.
All tools used in the lab have to be certified to these standards, and all personnel have to be tested and evaluated annually. All work on evidence done by an analyst must be reviewed by other certified analysts. The failure of an analyst could jeopardize any convictions in recent trials for which the analyst testified or prepared evidence.
The accreditation program still is in its infancy. There are 327 accredited general forensics labs in the country, Christy said, but only 12 accredited digital forensics labs. With more than 19,000 law enforcement agencies in the country, most with fewer than 25 officers, demands on certified labs are growing.
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