FORnSEC Solutions

Tips for effective forensic Report Writing

Digital Forensics is somewhat a complicated field. It requires a huge amount of patience, focus, and hard work.
Digital forensics is not only about the collection, preservation, and analysis but it also depends on the report.

Report- A summary of all findings is important in every sector whether medical, financial, or any,
The report is your voice as an examiner which you draft down. With its importance in any other field, it is important in cyber forensic too.

But writing down a forensic report can be a bit challenging and can require huge efforts.

Let’s see some tips that you can use while writing a report

While doing a cyber forensic investigation it becomes very important to understand which report has to be written, as by many times the judge, jury, may also get confused in understanding the report, while explaining the reports can cause a huge breakdown.

Cyber forensic investigation usually has the following reports:-
– Forensic Report:- A report that has all summary written having details of digital devices and their data extracted. these reports are generated by whichever tool your use.
– Hash Value Report:- A report having a hash value of data extracted.
– 65B Certificate:- A certificate signed by a subject matter expert showing his experience, process of investigation, observation, and conclusion.
Although confusion is a real enemy in digital forensics, you have to be clear enough.

Being Accurate

Being Accurate is most important in digital forensics. A forensic report should have every single detailed information about the analysis process, acquisition process, and others.

It may happen that while providing expert testimony an examiner may have enough questions but not answers which is why it is important to be accurate in the report.

Here are some important points to be mentioned in the report.
-Expert profile, process, OS used, witness name, process, tools used, Hash Value report, forensic report, observation, conclusion, declaration, and other statements.
Why become a doubt while you are there to clear the doubts.

  • Be thorough

As discussed in the earlier section for being accurate, being thorough is also important.
While writing a report you should always write important points than writing points to increase page volume.
When, What, How, Who, where, should all be included in the report.

  • Conclusion

What if you have written a detailed report and forget to write the conclusion or write a different conclusion?
This may create huge chaos and confusion in the courtroom.
A conclusion of the report should have the exact observation and a part of the result giving a decision of the case.

In short, the conclusion should be conclusive.

Wrapping up.
I hope that you would have understood how to write a forensic report.