The Need for Digital Evidence Standardisation

The Scope Of Digital Evidence

According to Garfinkle (2010), the Golden Age of digital forensics was the period from 1999 to 2007. Digital forensics was deemed as a mystical mechanism that could enable specialists to recover lost and deleted files and emails, find hidden information and give law enforcers insight into criminals’ minds at a push of a button. It was during this period that the emergence of the so-called CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) effect became widespread, mystifying many people with fancy gadgets and technical abilities that allowed digital evidence to be extracted in the process of fighting digital crime.

Traditionally, best practices for digital forensics was prevalent for doing investigations on machines running Microsoft Windows, searching for file formats such as Microsoft Office documents, JPEG, AVI, and WMV. Investigations were mostly restricted to a single, non-virtual computer system, and storage devices came with standard interfaces and were generally small enough to image during a single working day. Generally, best practices were accepted as the norm for digital forensics during this Golden Age. However, technological advances, changes in general business processes, and the modern tendency for over reliance on the Internet have changed the digital forensics playing field.