Dell to offer forensics services to police

by Steve Ragan - Jul 9 2009, 16:45

Earlier this week, Dell announced that it will start offering help to the police in the form of new hardware and software offerings that will reduce the backlog of digital forensics and evidence that has continued to mount.

Dell to offer forensics services to police.(IMG:DELL)

In a partnership with AccessData, EMC, Intel, Oracle, VEGA, and Symantec, the Dell Digital Forensics Solution creates a datacenter approach to digital forensics that is said to simplify the process of evidence collection and processing, improve efficiency of data and information sharing and administration among forensics teams, all while maintaining strict adherence to evidence handling and auditing guidelines.“This is very different to the way many systems work now, where data is analyzed in isolation on a workstation with little protection from malicious code and no ability for analysts to collaborate on the same evidence. We've taken our experience in servers, the cloud and high performance computing, and created a solution which we believe will transform the way digital evidence is processed, leading to quicker forensic analysis and criminal convictions,” said Dell’s VP of European public-sector business Josh Claman.According to statements made during InfoSec, the average backlog of data awaiting forensic analysis in the UK is 18-24 months across the 43 police constabularies. With that in mind, Dell wants to open a new market, while at the same time working to crackdown on this backlog that, in all honesty, could be letting criminals walk free. “In the UK you have 28 days in which to get your case together before a suspect must be released, which isn't a lot of time to look through what might be terabytes of data in a single case,” Claman said.Research firm IDC estimated the United States market for digital forensics services would be worth over $600 million this year alone; other estimates say the international market for similar services will be around $2 billion by 2012.

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