Dell Offers Data Forensics for Police Use

ROUND ROCK, Texas—Dell, in conjunction with data and security firms, is offering police a new centralized data center for digital forensics investigations utilizing new hardware and software.

According to a release posted on TheTechHerald, the computer firm has partnered with AccessData, EMC, Intel, Oracle, VEGA and Symantec to create Dell Digital Forensics Solution, a digital forensics data center designed to simplify and streamline evidence collection and processing, and also improve efficiency of data and information sharing and administration among forensics teams 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, " said Dell VP of European public-sector business Josh Claman. "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,”"

The new data center seeks to eliminate police backlog, which is quite lagging in the UK, as much as 18 to 24 months.

"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.

According to research firm IDC, the U.S. market for digital forensics services could be valued at $600 million just this year. Other estimates predict the international market for such services could hit $2 billion by 2012.