Portable, high-performance, and all-in-one digital data recovery lab for digital forensics to greatly enhance efficiency and capabilities of European investigation authorities

Project Information

SALUS

Grant agreement ID: 808099

DOI

10.3030/808099

Project closed

EC signature date 21 March 2018

Start date 1 April 2018

End date 30 September 2018

Funded under

• Secure societies - Protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

MH SERVICE GMBH
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SALUS (Portable, high-performance, and all-in-one digital data recovery lab for digital forensics to greatly enhance efficiency and capabilities of European investigation authorities)

Reporting period: 2018-04-01 to 2018-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The digital revolution is fundamentally changing the world regarding quality of life, efficiency of our economy, communication and data handling. It’s not surprising, that digital data is nowadays - intentionally or not – involved in most criminal activities and is of upmost importance in the investigation process. Moreover, with cyber-crimes, a whole new area of criminal offences is emerging.
To face this fast-growing threat, and close the “digital gap” in investigations, law enforcement agencies established digital forensics units to find, extract and analyse digital data for fighting crimes, terrorism, espionage and improve cyber defence. Here, forensics experts are also confronted with damaged disks, deleted or compromised data. Most of them are not even looked upon, because forensic units are understaffed, lack data recovery specialists and don’t have the necessary hard- and software infrastructure, to legally suitable extract the evidence inhouse. This could mean the failure of the investigation or a crucial time delay!
mh SERVICE, a leading specialist for digital forensics, developed the fastest, most efficient and powerful data recovery device that ever existed: SALUS. The portable system is designed for usage at any forensics lab and in the field by trained forensics experts. The system covers nearly all types of media interfaces, data storage technologies and recovery techniques. The fool-proof software guidance and performant hardware allows to significantly enhance efficiency and capabilities of forensic units.
Our ambition is to revolutionise forensic data recovery and become provider of the new global standard solution. Our goal is to make the fight against crime and terrorism more efficient, more successful and hence protect freedom and security of Europe and its citizens!

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the action, a feasibility study was conducted approving the technological, practical and economic feasibility of the system. The feasibility study based on assessing market and competition landscape. Moreover, technological design, functions and specifications were verified by customer involvement. This was done by a questionnaire and interviews with potential customers. An implementation plan was elaborated for successful market introduction and the results of the feasibility study were integrated in a business plan including a commercialisation strategy and ideal sales concept for defined markets.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

mh SERVICE provides a Kiosk solution for data recovery for public authorities, like criminal investigation authorities, but as well for users from the private segment, like data centre operators, data recovery companies and IT-administrators in corporations. Up to now, the users are in most cases forced to contract specialised service providers, which is a problem in case of criminal investigations or in case of sensitive business data. On the other hand, to rescue data inhouse is not possible or very inefficient, as very specific competences and a data recovery laboratory is necessary. All other existing state of the art solutions, like recovery software only support very few data storage technologies, are extremely dependent on the hardware which is used and hence offer only very limited results and a poor performance. SALUS closes the gap between such limited solutions and a data recovery laboratory, by providing a portable, high-performance, simple to use Kiosk solution. By the included hardware, SALUS is compatible to most data storage technologies and can identify and recover data, as well as support the user in the recovery process even if there are physical damages.
This will help investigation authorities to become much more efficient and provide investigators more recovered data much faster. This makes the fight against crime and terrorism more efficient, more successful and hence protects freedom and security of Europe and its citizens!

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