Digital forensics, documented for a New York record.
Digital forensics is the recovery, preservation, and analysis of electronic evidence — from computers, mobile devices, servers, cloud platforms, and social media — under a chain of custody documented well enough to withstand challenge in a New York court.
Most disputes now turn on a record that was never printed. A departing employee’s laptop, a messaging thread, a cloud audit log, a phone that was wiped the week before a preservation letter arrived — the facts live in artifacts, and the artifacts only matter if they were handled correctly from the first minute.
Our examiners image and analyze that evidence to forensic standards, then document what was done, when, by whom, and with which tools, so the methodology is as defensible as the findings. We work for New York counsel, corporate legal departments, and the courts themselves, and the work is built from the outset to be explained under cross-examination rather than merely filed.
What we deliver
- Computer & server forensics
- Mobile device extraction
- Cloud & SaaS data analysis
- Social-media & messaging evidence
- Deleted-data & artifact recovery
- Forensic imaging & preservation
How the engagement runs
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Scoping and conflicts
We identify the parties, clear conflicts, and agree what evidence is in scope, what is time-critical, and what must be preserved before anything else happens.
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Preservation and imaging
Devices and accounts are imaged to forensic standards, hashed, and logged. The chain of custody starts here and is documented continuously from this point forward.
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Analysis
We examine artifacts, logs, and file systems to reconstruct what happened and when — and, just as importantly, to identify what the evidence does not support.
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Reporting and testimony
Findings are delivered in a written report built to be read by counsel and the court, with the examiner available for deposition and trial testimony.
Why the jurisdiction matters
Admissibility standards differ depending on where your matter sits. New York state courts have historically applied the Frye general-acceptance standard to expert proof, while the federal courts here — the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York — evaluate expert testimony under Federal Rule of Evidence 702. Forensic work that was documented loosely tends to fail under either standard, and it fails at the worst possible moment.
We build the record accordingly: reproducible methods, standard tooling, contemporaneous notes, and a chain of custody that a reviewing examiner could follow independently.
Digital Forensics — common questions
Preservation is the piece that cannot wait, because the risk is ongoing: devices get reissued, cloud retention windows expire, and automatic deletion policies keep running while the matter is being scoped. We treat imaging and preservation as the first step, ahead of analysis, and we can scope that step before the broader engagement is finalized.
Often, but not always. Computers and phones generally produce the most complete evidence when imaged directly, and our New York office lets us handle that locally. Cloud accounts, email tenancies, and many server environments can be collected remotely with the right credentials and authorization.
Sometimes, and the honest answer depends on the device, the file system, how much time has passed, and how much the device has been used since. Even where file contents are unrecoverable, the surrounding artifacts — logs, registry entries, timestamps, and metadata — frequently establish that a deletion occurred, when, and by whom.
Yes. Our forensic professionals write their own reports and defend them in deposition and at trial. Work is scoped from the beginning on the assumption that the examiner will have to explain every step under cross-examination.