Different criminal investigations will require different kinds of computer forensic analysis. Thus, between homicide and corporate date theft, the procedure will vary a lot. There are common features shared as part of the legal system, or some form of common grounds. First of all, finding evidence that can be accepted in a court of law is not enough. Before getting to court, a computer forensics investigator has to make sure that he/she extracts and preserves evidence, preventing decay or damage that would make it unusable. Furthermore, the forensic analysis actually starts when the crime scene has been thoroughly searched by the forensic experts.

Traces and evidence cannot be identified on site, it takes professional computer forensic analysis to find relevant details and establish facts. Thus, germs, bacteria, fingerprints, facial portraits, mineral and textile analysis, DNA analysis as well as other elements collected on the crime scene get investigated one by one to be proved or improved as relevant or irrelevant for criminal justice. In case victims are involved in the forensic analysis, medical exams and checks will be performed by people who are qualified to identify anything with relevance for the case.

It is the popular belief that a forensic analysis necessarily involves manslaughter or other very tragic crime but forensic analysis serves for a very large number of investigations. Where there is a a case of financial fraud, a work accident, a corporate data theft, a fire and so on, professional forensic analysis helps close files and clarifies lots of situations. We tend to attribute a criminal justice picture to forensic analysis but this is the model we’ve grown used from TV series such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation; yet reality could be very different from that.

Science TV channels like Discovery for instance also allow an insight of a computer forensic investigation, but they surely present the most spectacular of cases. It seems like there is an international trend to be fascinated with the sensationalism of violence and ever younger people are psychologically affected by such trends in the group subconscious. If you feel animated by justice spirits, try not to act on those, because it is forbidden by law to interfere in criminal or forensic investigations. Let’s leave the drama aside and allow the professionals to do their jobs. A forensic analysis does not make the subject of amateurish investigation as it is a very complex scientific procedure that requires special training.

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The world of justice seems to be shaped by forensics investigation procedures, and the imagination of many people has been fired by TV crime series such as CSI: New York for instance. There is an impressive number of tasks that a computer forensics investigator is capable of covering today: from autopsy techniques and forensic anthropology to DNA fingerprinting, computer facial reconstructions, toxicology and lots of others. Science constantly proves to be the best way to fight crime and support the legal system. And the responsibility of the forensics investigation is the responsibility of the people who conduct it.

There are methods, features, science experiments and interviews that increase the variety of a computer forensic investigation types even further. On crime scene procedures are very complex and they in fact make the grounds on which the investigation is then developed or conducted. The crime scene provides the information for the lab forensics investigation, one would  not be possible without the other, and negligence of any of them could lead to the failure of the justice process. When the crime scene is not analyzed properly, the court evidence can be compromised, therefore the best of experts use their skills to find evidence on site.

The peculiarity of a forensics investigation further depends on the type of crime that the authorities are dealing with. The steps of a data analysis for instance will be different than those of a robbery. Thus, special equipment is required for data retrieval as it is the case in computer forensics. The examination, the analysis and the reporting follow the identification of the forensic details. The procedures and measures vary for each of the steps involved although they eventually converge into one single viable point: finding the criminal.

Depending on what kind of forensics investigation is necessary, different experts will be involved. In fact, all the results of such criminal analysis are a sum of several people’s contribution, because conclusive results can require lots of hours of work, with the involvement of several forensics departments and even then, there are chances that a suspect may not be confirmed as the author of the crime. There are cases when the lack of evidence doesn’t allow the legal system to follow its normal course. There are hundreds if not thousands of such cases in the archives of police departments all over the world.

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