Many are not aware of the common threats/investigations that officers, analysts, and investigators face on-scene or in the lab and how computer forensics software can help solve these investigations.
When investigating on the scene, officers and investigators face numerous crimes and threats such as financial crime, terrorism, human trafficking, child exploitation, gun violence, drug trafficking, and much more.
Common Threats/Investigations:
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- Most common crimes: insider threat, brand theft, intellectual property theft, or corporate fraud.
- Who is most affected: Businesses, Corporations, etc.
- eMarketer reports that there is a rise in cryptocurrency crimes. "Crypto theft increased by 516% compared with 2020: Roughly $3.2 billion worth of cryptos were stolen in 2021. Of that, about $2.2 billion—72% of the 2021 total—were stolen through DeFi protocols. Scamming revenues rose 82% in 2021 to $7.8 billion." [1]
- The 2020 PwC’s Global Economic Crime and Fraud Survey states, "We quizzed more than 5,000 respondents across 99 territories about their experience of fraud over the past 24 months. Asking things like whether they’d been hit by fraud. How many times. What type? And what they’d done to prevent it from happening again. What did they tell us? Nearly half had suffered at least one fraud – with an average of six per company. The most common types were customer fraud, cybercrime, and asset misappropriation. And there was a roughly even split between frauds committed by internal and external perpetrators, at almost 40% each – with the rest being mostly collusion between the two." [2]
- How Computer Forensic Software makes a difference: Computer forensics tools allow corporate internal investigation teams to collect data and evidence quickly to find sources of fraud and quickly share them with authorities before liabilities can happen
- Most common crimes: Terrorist acts
- Who is most affected: Citizens
- The FBI writes that “International and domestic violent extremists have developed an extensive presence on the Internet through messaging platforms and online images, videos, and publications. These facilitate the groups’ ability to radicalize and recruit individuals who are receptive to extremist messaging. Social media has also allowed both international and domestic terrorists to gain unprecedented, virtual access to people living in the United States in an effort to enable homeland attacks.” [3]
- How Computer Forensic Software makes a difference: Terrorists around the world have been trading crypto coins to purchase weapons and drugs to continue their attacks on innocent civilians. Software deployed by special forces, military, and intelligence agencies worldwide can be used for sensitive site exploitation operations (including DOMEX, MEDEX, Tactical Media Exploitation, and biometric identity).
- Most common crimes: Child exploitation, Child abuse, Human trafficking
- Who is most affected: Women, Children
- The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports that “the most common form of human trafficking (79%) is sexual exploitation. The victims of sexual exploitation are predominantly women and girls. Surprisingly, in 30% of the countries which provided information on the gender of traffickers, women make up the largest proportion of traffickers. In some parts of the world, women trafficking women is the norm. The second most common form of human trafficking is forced labour (18%), although this may be a misrepresentation because forced labour is less frequently detected and reported than trafficking for sexual exploitation. Worldwide, almost 20% of all trafficking victims are children.” [4]
- How computer forensic software makes a difference: Field forensics software, such as mac forensic tools or PC forensic tools, along with Project Vic Hashsets, lets investigators collect, analyze and report on child exploitation cases at the start of their investigation so they can police internet crimes with intelligence. Human trafficking crimes are typically related to financial crimes.
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Probation/Parole - Sex Offender Phone Usage
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- Most common crimes: Child abuse, Fraud, Cybercrime
- Who is most affected: Children, Citizens
- RAINN states that “Out of every 1,000 suspected rape perpetrators referred to prosecutors:
- 370 have at least one prior felony conviction, including 100 who have 5 or more
- 520 will be released—either because they posted bail or for other reasons—while awaiting trial
- 70 of the released perpetrators will be arrested for committing another crime before their case is decided”
- And “In 2013, there were 161,000 state inmates incarcerated as punishment for sexual violence crimes—that’s about 12% of all state inmates” [5]
- How computer forensic software makes a difference: Deploy software across teams to enable agents to make rapid field checks on convicted sex offenders, fraud offenders, and cybercriminals on parole. These field checks can diminish the number of offenses committed once perpetrators are released.
- Most common crimes: Mass casualty, Gun violence, drug trafficking
- Who is most affected: Citizens
- The USSC reported in FY 2018, 69,425 cases were reported and 18,964 of those involved drug trafficking and that seven different drug types accounted for 96.5% of drug trafficking offenses [6]
- How computer forensic software makes a difference: Officers can rapidly scan, extract, and analyze critical intelligence from computers on-scene and in the lab with software that has step-by-step collection capabilities to quickly triage and perform a field analysis. This helps tremendously with time-sensitive cases such as mass casualties.
Computer triage allows for investigators, analysts, and officers to solve their cases faster whether they are triaging computer devices on scene or in a lab. Computer forensics software leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to simplify complex digital evidence investigation tasks, helping organizations uncover actionable intelligence within seconds and minutes.
Learn more about how computer forensics can help your investigations and download one of our white papers below for more detailed information.
