When You Need to Finally Call a Digital Forensics Expert

In an age of the cloud, it is easy to take convenient access to data for granted. With older or more secure information, localized storage can fail potentially corrupting valuable data. Before handing the job off to your in house IT team, consider hiring a digital recovery expert first.

Digital Forensics Expert: Job Description and Overview

Digital forensics is often very similar to the crime scene technicians and coroners seen on many TV shows. Experts in data recovery and digital forensics also perform autopsies in order to extract evidence from hard drives, mobile devices, or any other electronic device.

Hiring a Digital Forensics and Data Recovery Specialist

There are a number of reasons to hire computer forensics experts. Police departments often use them to sort through Google searches or Facebook posts. Divorce attorneys use digital forensics specialists to uncover hidden assets or evidence of an affair. Corporations use digital forensics experts to protect their intellectual property to ensure that current or ex-employees will not steal information or work for competing businesses.

Best Qualifications for a Digital Forensics Expert

While many digital forensics specialists have advanced education, such as bachelor’s or master’s degrees in computer science, it is not a requirement. In fact, some of the most widely regarded experts in the field do not have a university education. Interestingly, many of those same people often teach courses at prestigious colleges.

Accreditation and experience are far more important for a company concentrating digital forensics and data recovery expert. Flashback Data, for example, conducts its investigation in a lab accredited by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors (ASCLD/LAB International). This is the same accreditation assigned to the FBI and state law enforcement forensics labs.