Police forces, military and government agencies to benefit from the next generation of digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) technologies
London, U.K.: Exterro has announced its partnership with Blue Lights Digital (BLD), a leading investigation and intelligence capacity building company. The partnership will further extend Exterro’s reach into the UK public services sector and deepen BLD’s digital forensics offering, opening up new markets and furthering their joint mission to deliver next generation digital forensic technology.
Under the new partnership, BLD will actively market Exterro’s full Forensic Toolkit (FTK) solutions to its existing customer base and to law enforcement, intelligence agencies and military organisations to assist them with their digital investigations and intelligence building capabilities. FTK, FTK Central, FTK Lab and FTK Enterprise lead the market in terms of processing and scalability, delivering unprecedented speed and efficiency that drives down data backlogs thereby seeing criminal cases resolved faster and suspects either released or charged.
Nick Curry, COO, Blue Lights Digital commented – “The value we bring to Exterro is through our established customer base across law enforcement, military policing, the MOD, and governmental agencies while Exterro’s technology covers computer and mobile device forensics as well as disparate data sources so will give us that acceleration into the forensic space.”
In addition, BLD will also make available Exterro’s wider product portfolio, including its Incident and Breach Management and Smart Breach Review, to offer Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR). This is a great addition given that police forces will be required to obtain accreditation to conduct on-scene DFIR examinations by October 2022. DFIR also enables other organisations to comply with regulatory requirements such as data breach notification and to proactively mitigate the risk of a breach.
As a Forensic Partner on the Exterro Partner Program, BLD is also currently undergoing accreditation as an Authorised Training Partner (ATP) which will allow its subject matter experts and practitioners to provide additional customer support in the form of training around the technology. “Exterro’s Partner Program strengthens our strategic partnership through improved product and service knowledge, which ensures these challenges are addressed up front and we can provide insight into the most relevant and up to date digital forensic technology. Ultimately, this allows us to communicate the product benefits and values to customers and translates into increased sales”, said Curry.
The partnership will see BLD and Exterro coordinate joint sales and marketing initiatives beginning with their co-exhibition at the Security & Policing 2022 event taking place at the Farnborough International Exhibition and Conference Centre on 15-17 March 2022. BLD will showcase a First Response Digital Forensic Unit (FRDFU) on stand A76, a specially equipped van designed for rapid deployment to scenes involving complex or rapidly evolving investigations that will house FTK Lab, a computer forensics lab for mass scale distributed data processing.
The FRDFU enables evidence to be collected, secured and analysed on site, avoiding the delay incurred by transferring exhibits to a forensic laboratory. “Whether we’re investigating a UAV rogue pilot, criminal or trader, digital evidence is nearly always present but it’s ephemeral in nature so is not there for long. With FRDFU we have closed the time to capture and examine by bringing the lab to the evidence rather than the other way round,” explains Matt Service, CEO, Blue Lights Digital.
A number of demos will be shown on the FRDFU from the capture of a UAV, to the collection of mobile phones and computers for exhibit recovery and examination. The team will carry out data capture and analysis in the context of these scenarios, with the investigative results then being used to outline potential courses of action.
The BLD partnership is the first to be announced since Exterro began its partner recruitment drive at the beginning of the year, and will see Exterro actively expand its presence in the UK public sector space. It’s a sector that has seen unprecedented growth over the course of the past year, with investment in software and IT services up 9% according to TechMarketView - treble the original forecast for demand.
“Blue Lights Digital is a major coup for us because it allows us to build upon the success we’ve already had with the UK police force. The partnership allows us to provide solutions that address the real-world problems besetting forces today, from ensuring front line officers can participate in review, to dealing with case backlogs and mental wellbeing,” said Ian Rainsborough, International Channel and Partnerships Director, Exterro. “As a leading computer forensics provider, we are a natural fit for the BLD portfolio and the versatility of our offering means they can readily package FTK in a myriad of ways, enabling the company to target military agencies and regulated industries going forward.”
“Data is growing exponentially and with it evidential workloads so teams need to work smarter. The only way to do that is to scale your processing capability, and FTK is renowned for processing large datasets very quickly as well as being able to scale from single to multiple users, to a lab environment, a department, an agency. It will prove invaluable in helping us advise our customers on the best way to create a scalable forensic practice,” said Paul Cook, Digital Forensics and Technical Services Officer, Blue Lights Digital.
“As a business, we are constantly validating the tools that are out there and we're very mindful of anything that we endorse, promote and get behind. Exterro has a significant amount of heritage in the digital forensic space and their products have been iterated and developed now to a point where they are definitely the right product at the right time to support law enforcement”, added Curry.
