Traditional forensics, which is essential for litigation of any investigation, aims to ensure that each piece of discovered evidence, whether digital or physical, is admissible in a court of law. Progress in Information Technology impacts all aspects of society, including forensics \u2014 which is undergoing a change towards digital management. Improved approaches to handling digital or physical evidence include collection, storage, and processing.<\/span> New solutions are possible, including using Blockchain in electronic forensics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While physical evidence should be preserved and provisioned correctly, digital evidence must comply with requirements of relevance, authenticity, and consistency. This is the case because of the digital nature of much evidence related to digital crimes. Specifically, this evidence is modifiable, distributed (dispersed), and mobile \u2014 so it can cross distances easily.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Digital evidence processing presents unique challenges, as numerous evidence sources and custodians in various locations and jurisdictions must be considered. For each Matter, also known as the eDiscovery Project, there must be evaluation and documentation of such aspects as:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n During the Acquisition\u00a0phase, it is also important to know if the collection is finished and evidence sources have already been collected \u2014 or, alternatively, if data collection and processing are still in progress.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The solution to these challenges looks obvious. Major eDiscovery market players offer proprietary centralized software solutions as a single framework covering the whole Electronic Discovery Workflow.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In conjunction with a wide physical presence and qualified Digital Forensics professionals onboarded and equipped with well-developed infrastructure and facilities in places, these Digital Forensics service providers avoid Electronic Discovery Workflow segmentation, which increases digital evidence’s value in court. Such an approach sounds solid, yet is expensive, as the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of these facilities, equipment and specialists requires huge capital expenditures (CapEx) and operational expenditures (OpEx) that impact the overall cost of judicial proceedings.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That is why eDiscovery services providers are constantly seeking ways to optimize costs \u2014 preferably, without significant investments into existing business infrastructure. At the same time, they\u2019ll still need to maintain the existing Electronic Discovery Workflow \u2014 as demonstrated in Fig.1 below.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A quick look at the eDiscovery Workflow shows that the existing approach focuses on the unification of disparate and geographically distributed processes of different types of activities and facilitation of its interoperation to run everything in-house. Such an approach is a significant cause of high overheads in eDiscovery \u2014 despite room for cost optimization, including inviting 3rd-parties to operate, partially or in full, such processes and tasks as Custodian Interviews, Device Management, Evidence Collection, and Evidence Shipment.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The characteristics of digital evidence \u2014 especially its distribution (dispersion) and easy mobility \u2014 represent an opportunity to move from CapEx to OpEx and reduce the TCO of eDiscovery Workflow by inviting third parties in places. Ensuring a well-organized Chain-of-Custody tracking process addresses the challenges of third-party involvement in distributed forensics information processing and helps maintain high eDiscovery standards.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n By “well-organized CoC process,” we mean using software solutions based on reliable technology to prove neither evidence source media nor evidence itself was altered or destroyed without authorization during all eDiscovery stages.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n All existing proprietary Electronic Chain of Custody (CoC) Software addresses the process of paperless documentation, notably<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>the chronology of maintaining and processing digital evidence during eDiscovery. Thus, the CoC aims to prove at all levels that alleged evidence is relevant to the Production instead of being falsely modified or planted.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Taking these facts into account, we can formulate general requirements for modern eDiscovery solutions. They should:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If your company uses an eDiscovery Software solution that doesn\u2019t meet one or more of the market demands above, there is room for business optimization. Such business optimization, also known as Digital Transformation, aims to improve the eDiscovery Workflow processes to hit changing market demands (boosting revenue) as well as software solution modernization itself to reduce TCO and ensure scalability (reducing costs).\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So, the right technical approach really matters.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As a technical approach, Blockchain networks by design guarantee transparency, authenticity and security, immutability, and auditability.\u00a0 Driven by Smart Contracts \u2014 software implementations of custom business logic \u2014 such networks allow running an immutable ledger or registry of facts as well as storing any kind of information. Consequently, this makes them the best fit for maintaining and tracing the Chain of Custody for forensic applications.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Utilizing the power of private-permissioned blockchains, like Hyperledger, the owners of proprietary Electronic Forensics Software can easily create and publish Smart Contract-based interoperability conventions for third-party providers to set up eDiscovery ecosystems \u2014 while maintaining overall Electronic Forensics process ownership.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For those looking for low-cost changes that ensure fast ROI, we suggest empowering the existing eDiscovery Solution with a Hyperledger-based extension. This approach brings the advantages of proven integrity and tamper resistance to the eDiscovery chain of custody \u2014 even in the event of a third-party presence. In most cases, it means minimal changes to existing eDiscovery business architecture in exchange for the flexibility to outsource part of eDiscovery processes to third parties, as represented in reference architecture below (Fig. 2.)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The approach in Fig.2 extends the existing <\/span>Main eDiscovery Software Solution<\/span><\/b>, providing an immutable and separate copy of the event log transferred from the Azure-based software platform using an <\/span>eDiscovery extension for third-party<\/span><\/b> add-on.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The main purpose of this add-on, developed by SmartDev, is to communicate with <\/span>Smart Contract REST API<\/span><\/b>, calling Smart Contract (known as ChainCode) functions on Blockchain side via simple API-calls like <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n https:\/\/SmartContractAPI.com\/channels\/Tenant1\/chaincodes\/ManageEvidenceMetadata<\/span><\/i><\/a> with body<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n
<\/span>Electronic Discovery Workflow: Transformation Motivation<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"Electronic](\"https:\/\/smartdev.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Fig.1-1.svg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/span>Shaping eDiscovery Process Adjustments<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n
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<\/span>Blockchain in Electronic Forensics: An Approach to Running the eDiscovery Ecosystem<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n
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