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The number of crimes involving electronic data is sky-rocketing these days, particularly with the immense preponderance of computers and other digital media in our lives. Thus, data forensics has become a distinct sub-division of forensic science consisting of technical expertise, the finding of electronic evidence, digital investigations and even data recovery. To count only a few of the judicial cases for which data forensics is useful, we ought to mention sexual harassment, intellectual property theft, discrimination, breach of contract and so on. Therefore, it is not that difficult to understand why data forensics is so important in the legal system.

A normal type of computer investigation cannot detect or extract bits of information remained after deletion. File left-overs, deleted files, hidden and discarded files are searched and analyzed as part of the data forensics analysis. Although there are lots of challenges when trying to identify the criminal process or to recover data, this search for the needle in the haystack is pretty successful. What is the relevance of such evidence for legal cases? Well, practice has already proved it that the recovery of a deleted e-mail message can change the course of a trial.

Data forensics constantly needs to face apparently unsurmountable challenges. The applications do have far-reaching applications, but the work to extract digital evidence is strict and exhausting. Sometimes the extractor has difficulties in getting to the information that is buried too deep in the electronic system, or too exposed to destruction. This is also the reason why a duplication procedure is used to protect the information during the extraction process. Great caution, strict standards and lots of skills are needed for each of these steps and only the best in the field can succeed.

When a criminal act involving digital systems is detected, the best way of action is not to address the other party and ask for a preservation of computer records, but rather a surgical approach by an expert in data forensics. This will reduce the costs of data collection and will make info recovery more likely. Moreover, it is false to assume that data forensics only applies to computer hard drives as the main systems that can store information; there are cases of criminal action involving, USB devices, CDs, DVDs and even voice mail systems. Memory hard drives are now incorporated even in fax and photocopy machines so that many of the documents can be recovered afterwards.

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