Affordability: Price may not indicate quality, but collaborative peer reviews can be.In selecting from the wide range of options, we considered the following criteria: When there is a tool for everything, the most pressing question is which one to use.īelow, ForensicsColleges has collected some of the best digital forensics and cybersecurity tools. Some of these go beyond simple searches for files or images and delve into the arena of cybersecurity, requiring network analysis or cyber threat assessment. The recipe for each is a little bit different.

New tools are developed daily, both as elite government-sponsored solutions and basement hacker rigs.

In addition, many tools fulfill more than one function simultaneously, and a significant trend in digital forensics tools are “wrappers”-one that packages hundreds of specific technologies with different functionalities into one overarching toolkit. Eventually, freeware and proprietary specialist technologies began to crop up as both hardware and software to carefully sift, extract, or observe data on a device without damaging or modifying it.ĭigital forensics tools can fall into many different categories, including database forensics, disk and data capture, email analysis, file analysis, file viewers, internet analysis, mobile device analysis, network forensics, and registry analysis.

However, as devices became more complex and packed with more information, live analysis became cumbersome and inefficient. Up until the early 1990s, most digital investigations were conducted through live analysis, which meant examining digital media by using the device-in-question as anyone else would. As a result, investigators rely on new digital forensics tools to assist them.ĭigital forensics tools are all relatively new. That said, retrieving that data securely, efficiently, and lawfully is not always a simple endeavor. Whether such a device belongs to a suspect or victim, the vast swathes of data these systems contain could be all an investigator needs to put together a case. Today’s smoking gun is more likely to be a laptop or a phone than a more literal weapon. Digital devices are ubiquitous, and their use in chain-of-evidence investigations is crucial.

Wireshark usage in forensic science