Question

During a criminal investigation, the prosecutor submitted the original hard drive from the suspect's computer as evidence. The defense objected during the trial proceedings, and the evidence was rejected.

Which of the following practices should the prosecutor's forensics team have used to ensure the suspect's data would be admissible as evidence?

A. Follow chain of custody best practices
B. Create an identical image of the original hard drive, store the original securely, and then perform forensics only on the imaged drive.
C. Use forensics software on the original hard drive and present generated reports as evidence
D. Create a tape backup of the original hard drive and present the backup as evidence
E. Create an exact image of the original hard drive for forensics purposes, and then place the original back in service

Answer 1

The prosecutor's forensics team should have created an identical image of the suspect's hard drive and performed analysis on the image only, ensuring the original hard drive's integrity and adherence to the chain of custody to make the evidence admissible in court. (option B)

Step-by-step explanation:

During a criminal investigation, ensuring that evidence such as data from a suspect's computer is admissible in court, the prosecutor's forensics team should strictly adhere to specific practices. The correct practice for handling digital evidence in this scenario is to create an identical image of the original hard drive, secure the original in a safe location, and perform the forensic analysis exclusively on the cloned drive. This procedure preserves the integrity of the original evidence and maintains a chain of custody, thereby ensuring that the data is not compromised or altered, which could potentially make it inadmissible in court. Such evidence handling is critical since presenting generated reports from forensic software used directly on the original hard drive or submitting tape backups or images placed back into service after imaging, would all run the risk of having the evidence rejected for not maintaining its original integrity and for potential contamination or alteration.