Project Synopsis

This project is a proof of concept developed to compliment a thesis by our client, Dr Dax Roberts. Dr Roberts completed a PhD thesis in 2013 "Data Remanence in New Zealand" that identifies the amount of data remanence on used storage devices after disposal. As discussed by Dr Roberts, this oversight can expose the previous owners to a range of risks (blackmail, fraud) through the access of the personal data that remains on the device. As a part of that thesis, used hard drives were analyzed to inspect the content and determine the baseline of data remanence in New Zealand, those results were then compared with international statistics to see how New Zealand compares and what further action (if any) needs to be taken.

The genesis for this project was the challenge of storing large volumes of data, easily adding new forensic data to the system and ensuring the tools used were up to date