Cell Phone Forensics Gets Even Better

Exterro Teams With Cellebrite for Mobile Device Collection

New partnership adds mobile forensics to Exterro's end-to-end e-discovery.

By Sean Doherty All Articles 

Law Technology News

June 26, 2013

 

Cellebrite, a provider of mobile forensic data collection and analysis products, and Exterro, maker of the Fusion e-discovery platform, announced on Wednesday a partnership to integrate mobile device data collection with Fusion.

 

The new partnership will allow Exterro customers to make use of Cellebrite offerings in two ways, said Jim FitzGerald, who directs Exterro's partnership program. First, Cellebrite will link to Fusion's collection workflow for mobile devices, said FitzGerald. Fusion can direct Cellebrite's product to collect from certain drives or files, as well as specific SMS messages and social networks.

The second avenue of intergration, continued FitzGerald, focuses on Cellebrite's data analysis and reporting. Cellebrite XML-based output will get ingested into Fusion analysis and reporting to make intelligible forms for review, create chains of evidence, amass evidence details, and help preserve evidence.

Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are prevalent if not ubiquitous in many organizations. According to Gartner, 1.2 billion smart, mobile devices will be sold this year. If smart devices are provisioned by the organization's IT department or is used in a "bring your own device" to work program, the devices are amenable to e-discovery. All the messages on the device, social media posts, and other data stored will be subject to discovery during an investigation or in litigation. The new partnership will extend Fusion's data management capabilities to include mobile data .
Cellebrite's bit-for-bit extraction and data analysis technology, which are part of its Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) Ultimate platform and its UFED Logical Analyzer software, decode and parse mobile device electronically stored information and provide an XML-formatted report.

For companies investing in the Fusion platform, there will be purchase incentives to also acquire Cellebrite technology, said FitzGerald. Becase "the increasing importance of managing mobile device data in the legal context, particularly during discovery, cannot be ignored," ended FitzGerald.
Exterro was named a leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for E-Discovery Software." Gartner analysts noted the Portland, Ore.-based company's willingness to work with a wide variety of partners, its project managent and technology suppport, and its full range of " Electronic Discovery Reference Model" functions in Fusion.

Cellebrite did not respond in time as this story went to press. The company's UFED series of devices appeal to forensic specialists in law enforcement, military, corporate security, and e-discovery. Cellebrite, based in Israel, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sun Corp., a Japanese public company.