Computer and Cell Phone Forensics Comes Into Focus

Digital Forensics in High Demand, Preston West Virginia Uses In House Analysis to Save Time

(Preston County, West Virginia) Even small cities and counties need to be able to handle digital evidence. Preston County, West Virginia is one such place where the Preston Sheriff’s office has the ability to collect Cell Phone Evidence and perform cell phone forensics in-house.

According to reports, the Preston County WV sheriff’s office’s Sergeant Sinclair is capable of performing Computer Forensics as well as Cell Phone Forensics in their offices located in Kingwood, WV. This has cut down the time it takes to prepare a case dramatically.

“Before the department was able to search the devices in-house, we would send them to the West Virginia State Police Crime Laboratory,” Sinclair said. “We would wait up to a year for reports on devices to come back because they are so busy.”

In addition to the inconvenience of waiting, the West Virginia State Police Crime Lab is located West Virginia State Police Headquarters in South Charleston, WV, which is the opposite end of the state from Kingwood, WV.

Digital forensics, a branch of digital forensic science, is the process of uncovering and interpreting electronic data from different types of devices including computers and cell phones. The data is analyzed to discover and preserve any evidence in its most original form while collecting, identifying and validating the digital information for the purpose of reconstructing past events. The data is then presented as evidence in court.

Digital Forensics can also be used to determine if something did not occur. File Dates are just one of the individual pieces of data that are heavily scrutinized in Digital Forensics.

Kingwood West Virginia is 172 miles north and east of the West Virginia capital of Charleston and approximately 101 miles southeast of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.