Overview#
A detective seizes three smartphones, a laptop, and a cloud-synced tablet from a suspect's premises. Each device needs to be imaged without altering a single bit, hashed immediately to establish integrity, and linked to the warrant and case record in a way that will survive challenge in court months later. Digital Evidence Management handles the full lifecycle from that first acquisition through to court-ready disclosure: collection, preservation, analysis, and chain-of-custody documentation.
Criminal investigation units, military intelligence teams, and corporate fraud investigators all share the same fundamental requirement: evidence that has not been tampered with, documented at every step, and exportable in formats their legal teams can work with. This module is built to that standard.
Open Standards#
- W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model v2.0: Verifiable Credentials signed with Ed25519 are issued at the moment of evidence collection and for every chain-of-custody transfer, providing a cryptographically verifiable provenance chain from seizure to court disclosure.
- RFC 6962 (Certificate Transparency): The append-only evidence Merkle ledger applies RFC 6962 domain-separation tags to distinguish leaf hashes from internal node hashes, preventing second-preimage collisions and enabling Merkle inclusion proofs for any evidence item.
- ISO/IEC 27037:2012: Evidence identification, collection, acquisition, and preservation workflows are aligned with this standard, which is explicitly cited in JSON export templates as the governing guideline for digital evidence packaging.
- FIPS 180-4 (SHA-256): SHA-256 is the mandatory hash algorithm for evidence integrity sealing; hashes are recorded before and after every custodial action and used as the leaf values in the Merkle ledger.
- ISO 19005 (PDF/A): Court-ready disclosure packages are rendered as PDF/A-1B, PDF/A-2B, or PDF/A-3 archives, with an embedded evidence manifest and Merkle root, ensuring long-term bit-for-bit reproducibility required for legal proceedings.
- RFC 3161 (Internet X.509 PKI Time-Stamp Protocol): Trusted timestamp authority receipts can be bound to PDF/A export packages, linking the SHA-256 digest to an auditable trusted clock and satisfying chain-of-custody temporal requirements.
- NIST SP 800-101r1: Mobile device forensics evidence packaging follows the NIST guidelines for mobile forensics, referenced explicitly in JSON export templates covering device acquisition and artefact preservation.
- RFC 8032 / Ed25519: All chain-of-custody log entries and Verifiable Credential proofs are signed with Ed25519 keys, providing compact, high-assurance digital signatures that are verifiable against the platform's published DID document.
Last Reviewed: 2026-02-05 Last Updated: 2026-04-14
Key Features#
Multi-Platform Digital Forensics#
Comprehensive support for mobile devices, computers, cloud services, and IoT devices. A unified analysis workspace enables correlation of evidence across a subject's complete digital ecosystem regardless of platform or source.
Forensically Sound Acquisition#
Write-blocking, hash verification (SHA-256 and MD5), and bit-level imaging for legal admissibility. Automated integrity verification at every processing stage confirms evidence has not been modified during collection or analysis.
Advanced Analysis Suite#
File carving, deleted data recovery, encryption detection, and steganography analysis. Extract hidden data, recover deleted content, and identify deliberate attempts to conceal information within digital evidence.
Timeline Reconstruction#
Automated correlation of digital artefacts across multiple devices and platforms. Builds comprehensive chronological views of user activity, communications, and data access spanning all evidence sources for prosecution narrative construction.
Artifact Correlation#
Cross-reference evidence from mobile applications, computer files, cloud backups, and network logs to build complete pictures of digital activity. Identifies connections between devices, accounts, and communications across the evidence set.
Chain of Custody Automation#
Cryptographic verification with strong hashing and digital signatures. Every evidence interaction is logged with timestamp, user identification, and action description, producing court-defensible documentation for each item in the evidence chain.
Use Cases#
- Criminal Investigation: Acquire and analyse digital evidence from suspect devices including smartphones, computers, and cloud accounts for prosecution
- Incident Response: Collect and preserve digital evidence from compromised systems during security incidents with forensic soundness for potential legal proceedings
- eDiscovery: Process and review digital evidence for civil litigation with defensible collection, processing, and production workflows
- Corporate Investigation: Investigate policy violations, data theft, and insider misconduct through analysis of corporate devices, email, and cloud services
Integration#
Connects with case management, evidence management, and forensic laboratory systems. Supports standard forensic image formats and exports to common analysis tools including Autopsy and DFIR-ORC. Integrates with court filing and eDiscovery platforms for downstream legal workflows.