Digital Investigations: How to Make Big Data Small

Justin Tolman, Forensic Subject Matter Expert at Exterro, and Farand C. Wasiak, Digital Forensics Examiner and Criminal Investigator

Today’s highly digital world has created a herculean task for law enforcement: parse impossibly large volumes of dense digital data to zero in on the information investigators need to do their jobs. Digital forensics agents regularly find themselves face-to-face with big data - defined as large, complex data sets - that contain the details investigators need to progress a case. Finding the right details in these data sets resembles finding a needle in a haystack.

As mobile devices offer more storage and greater computing power - all while taking in more and more data about individual users - this challenge mounts. For instance, walking just a few blocks with a smartphone in your pocket generates huge swaths of data, from your moment-by-moment location and connections to nearby stores to available Wi-Fi networks. You might think artificial intelligence (AI) is here to help parse this sea of data, but AI is a double-edged sword in digital forensics. It bears the potential for speeding up investigations, but can also be used to create illicit content. According to a Standford trial, it’s not a reliable detection tool in court, and the lack of regulation around it complicates its use even further.

The good news is that technologies do exist to help digital forensics agents tackle this challenge, and when they’re paired with a few best practices, big data suddenly isn’t so big....