I found three companies that provide various services, so I couldn’t produce tabular comparison, they nonetheless work in forensics field, and this is common between them.
X-Ways Software Technology AG1, this company produce a software named WinHex which is specialized tool for analyzing and working with raw information within memory or hard disk. Besides many technical features, it’s empowered by some forensics tools and extra features that can help forensics examiners to extract information from a digital media, such as files, disks or memory of the computers.
Here are some of the WinHex features that can be used for forensics examination:
- Disk Editor, File Editor, RAM Editor
- Directory Browser for FAT, NTFS, Ext2/Ext3, ReiserFS, CDFS/ISO9660, UDF
- Disk Cloning/Disk Imaging under DOS and Windows
- Data Recovery
- Partition Recovery/Boot Record Recovery
- Hard Drive Cleansing/Disk wiping
- File Slack Capturing
- Unused Space Capturing
- Inter-Partition Space Capturing
- Text Capturing
- Disk Catalog Creation
- Media Details Report
- Interpret Image As Disk
- Data Interpreter
- Data Analysis
- Binary/Text Search
- Bate-Numbering Files
- Checksum calculation with CRC16, CRC32, MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, PSCHF
The second company that I have found, Computer Forensic Services (CFS)2, provides services, this company doesn’t produce any product, but they have their own software and hardware tools in order to provide their services.
Their services cover requirements of a wide range of customers, individuals, corporations, law firms, regulatory bodies and courts. Their main services are as follows:
- Electronic Data Discovery (EDD), they extract and collect useful information for judgment.
- Complete Forensic Investigation Service
- Incident Response and Forensics, they help organizations to identify vulnerabilities and help them to be prepared for incidents, they also consult during incidents.
- Forensic Processing of Computer Evidence, by this service they process and investigate information for forensic purposes.
They also made this point that they don’t conduct Criminal Defense services. From this, I thought that there might be people who conduct such services for criminals!
The last company I came across is also called “Computer Forensic Services”3, it provides the following services:
- Electronic Discovery, which is collection, preservation, recovery, analysis and preparation of information that originally stored on electronic media.
- Computer forensics, Computer forensics is the scientific process of capturing (imaging) and analyzing information stored in any electronic format, for the purpose of investigating allegations, to find the truth, with no predisposition as to the outcome.
- Information Security, CFS provides a full range of information security services, including Assessment/Discover, Build/Development, Monitoring.
- Litigation Support, after evidence preparation, the company will support its customer to prepare the case to provide it to court, and consult throughout any incident.
- Law Enforcement support, the company provides training and support for law enforcement community.
- Electronic Countermeasures, consulting to improve digital security and helps to collect necessary information that can be used against criminals in court.
All of the companies that I have found, try to discover and analyze the information that can be used for trial as digital evidences. Each of which supports their clients in order to produce acceptable and provable evidence in court. Therefore, processing the collected information can be done with themselves.
REFERENCES:
[1] X-Ways Software Technology AG, http://www.x-ways.net/ , (Accessed Nov. 29th,2006)
[2] Computer Forensic Services (CFS), http://www.computer-forensic.com/ , (Accessed Nov. 29th,2006)
[3] Computer Forensic Services, http://www.compforensics.com/ , (Accessed Nov. 29th,2006)
Note: This article is prepared for university of Liverpool.