In an exclusive interview with EITN at RSA Conference 2016, Singapore- Digital Forensics expert Stephen McCombie lists the 3 biggest challenges in Digital Forensics are as follows:
- Sheer amount of data: Although there are much more sophisticated tools available today, the amount of data growth at a much faster rate than it can be comprehensively collected. In fact, often in digital forensics, it large percentage of collected data is remains unprocessed due to limitations in time and resources.
- High complexity of data: The complexity in the nature of data that has become overwhelmingly diverse – to where it resides (all types of public and private systems, platforms, macro and micro infrastructure networks over the world), social media, to how it is stored (file types, formats).
- Legalizing digital evidence: The biggest challenge is to be able to finally bring forth and present the digital evidence gathered to be used in the courts – from the hurdles of traversing cross-border, international laws and getting the cooperation of different governments in gathering data, right to dealing with the intrinsic and (still pretty immature) legal technical challenges in the courts.
The biggest myth of Digital Forensics is that it is a technical process. But the reality is it more about the PRESENTATION (of digital evidence) to the courts. If the digital evidence is not admissible, useable and ‘case law tested‘, then what forensics is even about at all?
– Stephen McCombie -Senior Practice Manager ACD APJ, RSA.
Background: Stephen McCombie possesses more than 30 years of industry, academic and government experience, to include specialized skills in digital forensics, incident response and strategic threat assessments. Ex-investigator, spenting 14 years in the NSW Police as a Detective, and was instrumental in the establishment of their computer crime investigation team.
