Category Archives: Mobile Phone Forensics

Mobile devices in the workplace set to double by 2014

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As the bring your own device (BYOD) trend continues Juniper Research is expecting to see a big increase in the number of employees using their own tablets and smartphones in the office.

The group’s new report shows that the number of employee owned personal mobile devices being used in the workplace is set to double by 2014 to 350 million.

But while BYOD has many benefits in terms of productivity and employee motivation, it can also bring with it many security risks.

Juniper Research pointed out that the majority of personal smartphones and tablets do not have any form of security software installed on them, leaving sensitive company information unprotected.

Nitin Bhas, author of the report, said: “While BYOD has become an inevitable trend for the enterprise, businesses need to create new end user IT policies and address key security issues emerging.”

The report also shows that it is the private sector that’s leading the way with BYOD, while the public sector is likely to be a late adopter.

As this shows there needs to be a greater emphasis on securing data on mobile devices as the risk of data being compromised increases.

X-Act Forensics has seen a large rise in mobile phone forensics and tablet forensics (conventional computer forensics) perhaps due to the BYOD or just the increased levels of cyber crime.

 

Deleted Text Messages

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X-act Forensics recently recovered some vital text messages from a mobile phone that a client thought they had deleted. As Managing Director Toby Andrews explains, every mobile phone model is different regarding the outcome of recovering deleted messages. “It does depend on the make and model of the mobile phone as to what can be recovered. In a lot of cases we have managed to recover deleted texts as well as pictures and audio recordings. Unlike computers which usually run on either a windows based operating system or Mac OS, mobile phones generally run on a wider variety of software platforms and therefore produce different results. The best way to truely determine what is recoverable from each handset is to examine the device(s) under mobile phone forensic analysis.”

Mobile Phone Forensics Dry Out

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We have received some interesting conditions of exhibits over the last year.

One example was a water drenched mobile phone. At first glance it looked unlikely, (to say the least) that we would be able to power on the handset, let alone perform a forensic examination of it. However persistent as we are the phone was duly taken out of its royal mail delivery bag (which resembled a soggy chip wrapper). After much technical deliberation the phone was secured in the laboratory next to a radiator. Twelve hours later the phone sprang to life and impressively the client got the text messages he was looking for!