Cracking the case of unstructured data
Today’s police officers have access to huge volumes of data from an enormous variety of sources. These include video from surveillance and body-mounted cameras, automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) data, phone records, as well as from historic records and information held by other government agencies.
Digital forensics is already an integral part of nearly every investigation. Often, police officers analyse up to 20 devices in a single caseload. The types of devices include everything from smartphones, tablets, and wearable tech devices to smart TVs, computers, laptops and servers, as well as voice-controlled applications. On top of that, police officers are also analysing social media and online forums to understand and track terror threats and criminal behaviour. This is key to how effective policing operates in the digital age.
That is all great news, right? Well, not so fast. As it turns out, all of these new sources of information are creating massive volumes of data for police departments to analyse. That creates a new set of challenges that deserve consideration as law enforcement works tirelessly to crack each and every case.
With all this data available to them, police forces large and small have more opportunities than ever to carry out “predictive policing” initiatives, where a forensic analysis of huge and varied data sets will enable them to highlight patterns of offences and offenders.
But one of the biggest challenges police forces face is managing vast amounts of data when there are disparate silos in which data is recorded and where it is stored. These silos range from police station server rooms and data centres to officers’ digital devices (such as laptops, body-mounted cameras, tablets, and even data from police drones) and paperwork.
Police forces, as with other industries, need to be able to break down these silos and easily visualise all data relevant to applicable cases so they can take action on it. They also need to be able to store all of that data in a highly intelligent manner so that they can access it on demand and meet regulatory requirements, such as the forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), all while managing their IT costs.
Effective data management starts with better visibility, insight and understanding of the information an organisation holds, especially personal data.
Visibility into data including what information is stored, how it is used, who owns and accesses it, and whether it is complies with data governance regulations, will allow police forces to implement a more holistic approach to managing data. This approach must include the ability to automatically classify volumes of data, scanning and tagging it in a granular, intelligent manner to ensure that they can quickly discover and analyse it for relevant criminal investigations.
