Customer stories

Digital Discovery

Digital Discovery finds the facts hidden in data with forensic investigation technology US investigative firm relies on OpenText EnCase to analyze the brave new world of data

Challenges

  • Complex, high-profile cases required comprehensive forensic solution
  • Needed to quickly prioritize key documents and evidence
  • Up-to-date support called for to access data hidden in multiple sources and formats

Results

  • Delivered clients a powerful, industry-standard forensic investigation solution

  • Accelerated defensible evidence collection and analysis

  • Ensured up-to-date support for the broadest range of devices, formats, and systems

Story

Digital Discovery’s experts use the latest technology-based protocols to ensure that all the relevant digital evidence is collected—no matter where or how it resides. The company is often engaged in high-profile cases, from investigating a major data breach perpetrated by Russian organized crime to assessing litigation readiness for a major oil and gas company during a catastrophic oil drilling accident in the Gulf of Mexico. In cases of this magnitude, a single text message can control the narrative and clients turn to Digital Discovery to ensure that no smartphone goes unexamined.

Someone using a tablet.

OpenText EnCase has done a great job of keeping up with all the necessary revisions, improvements, patches, versions that allow us to do our job. Absent that, I don’t think we could do our job in an effective and defensible manner. That’s the beauty of OpenText EnCase—we’ve always found it to be the gold standard.

Steve Davis
Director of Business Development, Digital Discovery

When collecting data for investigations, litigation, audits, or other requests, the forensics team is faced with the challenge of discovering data in many different formats and locations, often buried in mobile technology or cloud-based systems and rarely obvious at the surface level. Steve Davis, Director of Business Development for Digital Discovery, explained, “Where data lives is transient, it’s movable, and it’s also redundant. It’s in multiple places. It used to be a lot easier to cast the net around data. Now, it’s not so easy, and it takes a little sleuthing to figure out all the places where data may be. People are finding new ways to steal, exfiltrate, and migrate data.” He added, “We’re the white hat guys. We’re data scientists trying to get the truth uncovered, and likewise there are people that are trying to obliterate it or muddy the water by doing just the opposite.”

When Digital Discovery needed technology to support its forensic data collection efforts, the company chose OpenText EnCase—a solution that provides 360-degree visibility and access across endpoints including workstations, mobile phones, and servers. “OpenText EnCase brings both breadth and depth in terms of what it does. It deals with all data types, so it also doesn’t have a lot of limitations in terms of sizing and the things you can open,” noted Davis. Known for its speed, flexibility, and functionality, EnCase is the industry gold standard for forensic-grade collection and investigation. Davis explained the company’s decision to use OpenText EnCase: “We did our shopping like anyone else would on what the best product is, what fits, and what does the most things. OpenText EnCase stood out in terms of its abilities. It is probably the most powerful and most widely used product out there.”

Using OpenText EnCase as its primary forensic tool, the investigators at Digital Discovery can quickly capture, decrypt, and explore evidence down to the bit level from the widest variety of operating and file systems. The solution enables both rapid triage and deep forensic analysis. “We’re using OpenText EnCase to do triaging of data, to review data, to pull out artifacts in order to analyze behaviors associated with ShellBags [Windows Registry tracking], user artifacts, and a lot of the things that are pretty standard in the forensic community,” said Davis. Keeping up with the speed of innovation is critical for the Digital Discovery team as their investigations frequently revolve around hidden data. EnCase is continually developed to support the latest devices, operating and file systems, artifacts, and encryption types, allowing investigators to collect the evidence they need, efficiently and comprehensively. Davis explained, “OpenText EnCase has done a great job of keeping up with all the necessary revisions, improvements, patches, versions that allow us to do our job. Absent that, I don’t think we could do our job in an effective and defensible manner. That’s the beauty of OpenText EnCase—we’ve always found it to be the gold standard.”

OpenText EnCase brings both breadth and depth in terms of what it does. It deals with all data types, so it also doesn’t have a lot of limitations in terms of sizing and the things you can open.

Steve Davis
Director of Business Development, Digital Discovery

The Digital Discovery team helps clients uncover the truth in data. The EnCase solution provides processing capabilities that automate the preparation of evidence, and with an indexing engine built for scale and performance, complex queries can be automated across varied evidence sources to save time and increase efficiency. “I feel really good about what we do daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. We are providing a service that is helping clients get to information that they otherwise wouldn’t get to in an expedient manner. If we didn’t have OpenText EnCase as part of our toolkit, it would make our life a heck of a lot harder. There would be big holes in what we could do, if we didn’t have the ability to use it day in and day out.”

Reflecting on the company’s partnership with OpenText, Digital Discovery values its end-to-end portfolio of enterprise-scale solutions and services. Davis summarized, “OpenText brings a lot of resources to the table. They afford us a lot of growth potential because they’re so far-reaching. Through great growth and great vision, they have acquired a lot of pieces that complete the puzzle in terms of data management, all the way behind the firewall. OpenText is one of just a couple of companies out there that fit the bill for what most companies need in terms of document and data management.

About Digital Discovery

For more than 20 years, Dallas-based Digital Discovery has provided defensible eDiscovery and data consulting services to corporations, law firms, insurance companies, and government agencies. In addition to routine data sources and devices such as laptops and ECM systems, Digital Discovery specializes in complex and emerging data sources such as encrypted hard drives, mobile phones, IoT, and social media.