Digital forensics, the art of recovering and analysing the contents found on digital devices such as desktops, notebooks/netbooks, tablets, smartphones, etc, was little-known a few years ago. However, with the growing incidence of cyber crime, and the increased adoption of digital devices, this branch of forensics has gained significant importance in the recent past, augmenting what was conventionally limited to the recovery and analysis of biological and chemical evidence during criminal investigations.
Digital forensics is now used extensively to recover and analyse the deleted and un-deleted contents of digital media, including digital artefacts such as browser history, browser cache, images, email, document meta-data, etc. These artefacts are generally created when using the digital media for various purposes like Internet browsing, instant messaging, etc. After the successful recovery and analysis using digital forensics, one can obtain evidence regarding incidents of cyber crime, cyber espionage and unethical/illegal activities of miscreants or disgruntled employees. The evidence can then be used to take legal action against the accused, and to adopt preventive measures.
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