Staying Productive During the COVID-19 Crisis

The Corona virus pandemic is forcing changes in the way we do things. An increasing number of forensic examiners and investigators will have to work from home or other remote location instead of your normal work environment and facing new challenges as a result.

Normally security protocols dictate that internet access or remote working is prohibited due to IT Security Policy concerns. However, given the present crisis this may no longer be sustainable.

Here is a suggestion for managing mobile forensic extractions and analysis from a remote work location while meeting necessary IT security concerns.

Customers who have XRY in their lab could allow employees working remotely to download XRY files to their local computer via a secure VPN connection.  They can use the free version of XAMN mobile data analysis tool – XAMN Viewer – to analyze XRY files. XAMN Viewer can be downloaded from www.msab.com/downloads (publicly available) or from the Customer Portal (available for registered users). The customer incurs no additional cost for using their existing XRY systems and any XAMN Viewer instances as defined — though some network/policy configuration may potentially be needed.

This illustration shows the steps needed to implement the above.

If network bandwidth is a consideration, then use the subset function of XAMN to create a copy XRY file containing only the information you require, in order to reduce the file size.

You can reduce the number of artifacts to the selected or filtered ones (in the above example we will include just the selected 4 chat artifacts). We can additionally encrypt the XRY file and protect it with a password. Finally, we can select the additional content to be included in the resulting subset XRY file (e.g. the extraction log) and bundle it with a portable XAMN Viewer application.

Other solutions:

Alternatively, if remote desktop access is allowed within your IT environment that could be a consideration. MSAB is pleased to advise you that we support remote desktop working out of the box. We don’t restrict access to XRY/XAMN via your OS built-in or 3rd party Remote Desktop applications and you will not be charged an extra fee to obtain access.

We will be continuously looking for, and sharing, ways to allow our customers to continue working securely under quarantine conditions.

If for security reasons your organization won’t allow remote access, but you still have a critical need to work from home, then please contact us www.msab.com/support to discuss your situation. We are here to help and will talk you through possible alternative options.