Digital forensics – the discipline of finding the traces that applications and processes leave behind in order to piece together events – has become vital to law enforcement agencies, lawyers, and researchers. Granted, combing through and analyzing even a single cell phone can be daunting in its sheer volume of data, but the knowledge gleaned can create a priceless "Perry Mason moment." 

Originating in 1984 with the US FBI's Computer Analysis and Response Team, the practice of digital forensics has expanded past government walls to create a marketplace of private service providers. Indeed, the worldwide digital forensics market is expected to grow from $10 billion in 2022 to almost $24 billion in 2030, according to Future Market Insights.

Digital forensics companies aim to make scanning for, collecting, and analyzing data easier and quicker. Toward that end, legal GRC software provider Exterro today announced an update to its FTK 7.6 set of products that the company says can make parsing mobile phone evidence from Android or iOS 10 times faster than previous generations of its products. Mobile evidence can be stored in the same database as computer evidence for unified analysis.

In addition, FTK Connect helps clients connect FTK tools with existing systems, including SIEM and SOAR/XSOAR, case management, e-discovery, and in-house applications. Besides allowing FTK users to collect and process data more quickly, the integration reduces the risk that moving data between systems creates, Exterro said.

While the company emphasized that its latest release is geared mainly for forensics for judicial use, it also improves incident response. Exterro pointed out that the FTK tool set allows enterprise cybersecurity staff to investigate potentially compromised endpoints, examining and collecting folders and files even when the endpoint is not connected to the corporate VPN.

Exterro counts among its customers dot-com businesses like DoorDash and Pinterest, big corporations like American Express and Nestle, and government entities such as the cities of Denver, Colorado and Sparks, Nevada; state offices in California, Massachusetts, and Maryland; and agencies such as the US General Services Administration and the Los Alamos National Lab.