Inter-regional digital forensic knowledge management: needs, challenges, and solutions

Increasing demand for digital evidence in criminal investigations is driving decentralization of forensic capabilities closer to the crime scene. Law enforcement agencies are struggling to keep pace with technological developments, cybercrime growth, and scientific advances. In federated environments, digital forensic knowledge and practices vary widely across regions. To reduce delays, wasted resources, missed opportunities, mistakes, and misinterpretations, there is a pressing need to balance the democratization of digital forensic capabilities with knowledge management and sharing between decentralized regions. There are multiple forms of knowledge to be managed, including procedural, technical, investigative, scientific, behavioral, crime analysis, and forensic intelligence. In addition, there are multiple knowledge producers and consumers, including police investigators, digital forensic practitioners, criminal intelligence analysts, attorneys, and judges. Knowledge management becomes even more challenging when multiple interdependent regions are involved, speaking different languages. Taking all of these factors into consideration, this work presents an inter-regional knowledge management solution for improving the quality, consistency, reliability, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and return on investment of digital forensic capabilities. The basis of this work is a community-driven initiative of Swiss regional police authorities. Interviews were conducted with 15 digital forensic units to determine their current knowledge management practices and needs. The results were then generalized into a prioritized set of requirements for inter-regional digital forensic knowledge management that may be applicable in other countries. These requirements were used to evaluate knowledge management platforms, and one was selected. Implementation, operations, and maintenance challenges of an inter-regional digital forensic knowledge management platform are discussed.