SPEKTOR plays key role in Bedfordshire police cyber crime investigations
In a world where computers and mobile devices play an increasingly significant role in corporate and private lives, there is a growing need for powerful and efficient devices to identify fraud and illegal activities. Just 12 months after Bedfordshire Police introduced Evidence Talks’ SPEKTOR digital triage technology to their Cyber Crime Investigation Team, the results have been very impressive. DC Danny Howett forms part of the team at the Bedfordshire Police Cyber Hub, based in Bedford and acknowledges the contribution the system has already made.
Following initial training at Evidence Talks’ headquarters in Milton Keynes covering all aspects of the technology, DC Howett was able to provide local basic training to his colleagues to enable them to support colleagues in CID, the Sex Offenders Management team, Internet Child Abuse team and across the wider force area, assisting them in the field with warrants and live triage on the scene.
SPEKTOR was designed to include use by non-technical investigators, and allow front-line police, enforcement officers and corporate security staff to quickly preserve and automatically examine data stored on computers, servers and mass storage devices. To aid the flexibility of operations the system uses standard removable USB devices as ‘collectors’ so as many targets as identified can be processed simultaneously.
Using a combination of desktop and USB devices, the Bedfordshire Police Cyber Crime Investigation team participate in spot check visits to high risk and registered sex offenders to carry out digital triage on devices in situ, including desktop computer, laptop computers and hard drives.
Part of a tri-force, including Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, the 14-strong Bedfordshire squad also support ERSOU, the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit, which tackles the threat of organised crime across the six police forces in the Eastern Region, providing specialist covert policing capability to law enforcement.
DC Danny Howett is impressed with SPEKTOR’S performance. “Using this digital triage technology has enabled us to gather evidence against offenders quickly and efficiently in order to present information to the CPS in a much shorter time.
We have recently introduced a new system whereby every computer that is seized undergoes digital triage via SPEKTOR to identify whether there is a case to proceed through to the Digital Forensics Team for full investigation. This new process means that the time taken to identify cases that require further investigate is reduced from 1-3 days to just 2 hours and reduces the burden of work for the team.”