FTK Central, used by West Midlands Police for the first time

On last 19 May the newest Cloud-based digital forensics platform of Exterro was implemented in the West Midlands Police in London. This is unique and ground-breaking, for the cloud, up to recently, was taboo for such use. FTK Central, based on Microsoft Azure, offers detectives digitally the possibility to jointly, and from a distance, cooperate on cases.

The challenge
Investigating officers often have to deal with complex proceedings that create huge arrears which slow down the criminal proceedings. Therefore, Exterro, together with Microsoft, has developed a leading cloud-based Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) solution. Exterro’s FTK Central platform is placed in Microsoft Azure, so it is possible to quickly gather, process and asses extremely large amounts of data. Furthermore, the centralised access makes it possible to easily cooperate.

‘Exterro’s FTK has shortened the process time hugely and improved the forensic availability: proceedings that used to take up days, are now executed almost immediately. We expect to see improvements in the coming months, amongst which: a decrease of the arrears, minimal detention period for suspects and speeding up cases. This will result in a quicker judicial system, so innocent people can be released, the guilty can be convicted and the victims and their families can get closure. This was ground-breaking for our force and everyone who follows’, says John Price, Detective Sergeant of the West Midlands Police.

FTK Central
FTK Central of Exterro is a web-based platform in which tactical detectives can jointly conduct an inquiry. This is a typical review platform, intended for analysing and assessing the data found in an inquiry. By using FTK Central, the West Midlands Police can furthermore profit from a vast number of functionalities, amongst which offline, explicit image detection. The Explicit Image Detection function also protects the mental health of the investigators, by safeguarding unnecessary exposure to graphic material during forensic investigation.

Use at West Midlands Police (WMP)
West Midlands Police is one of the largest forces of England with 52 police stations and 6,846 police officers who are responsible for 2,93 million civilians. With the assistance of the new platform, digital forensic investigators and case detectives can work on a case simultaneously, without physically being present at an office. The safe upload of sensitive forensic details into the cloud means a huge break-through and this clears the way for other forces to follow their lead.

FTK central enables the detectives of WMP to process and validate huge amounts of different data quickly and at a large scale. This is possible with one interface that includes a real-time overview of the tasks appointed to them. Since the solution requires minimal training, this enables the WMP’s officers to cooperate with forensic reviewers, investigators and detectives while gathering, processing and assessing important evidence in a case.

Harsh Behl, director product management of Exterro says about this: ‘The WMP project has shown the speed, scalability and flexibility of a cloud-based DFIR platform and we are convinced that this project will provide other police forces of a blue print regarding how they can transfer from a working method based on hardware to a process that is in the cloud. The success of this could be determining for the future of digital, forensic investigation’.

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