Building a Digital Forensics Laboratory

The book I read to research this post was Building a Digital Forensic Laboratory by Craig Valli et al which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. When you make a copy of a hard drive or RAM memory it has to be an exact copy. You need various hardware to acheive this you need the biggest hard drives you can get, the most throughput available & the hard drives should be hot swappable. You should photograph any digital devices & their connections & also the connectors should be labelled. Also when the digital device is reexamined in the laboratory it should be reconnected in the same way. The standard software they use in a laboratory is encase & sleuthkit for computers & mobiledit & paraban for mobile devices also you need various adaptors for mobile devices. It should be pointed if your laboratory gets discredited in one case your work will probably dry up so it is essential you follow the correct procedures. The building should be well away from fault lines, flood plains, tanks containing flammable substances basically anything that can destroy your building & evidence. It's worth pointing out that particularly in the USA there is a huge backlog of forensic evidence that is waiting to be processed & this is as good a time as any to start a digital forensic laboratory. Also digital forensics is still in its infancy & many cases at first glance don't seem to involve digital forensics but they are constantly finding new angles that do involve digital forensics. You should be aiming for a starting turnover of $3 million a year.