INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The co-chairs of a panel working on a new school grading formula for Indiana promised Thursday that their work will be "fair and transparent."
Democratic School Superintendent Glenda Ritz and Southwest Allen County School Superintendent Steven Yager said they plan to meet weekly in order to recommend a new scoring system to the State Board of Education ahead of the Nov. 1 deadline. The two are leading a 17-member group assessing...
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Young people in England on ‘dead-end’ courses that ‘will not lead to jobs’
The low-level vocational courses taken by many young people have little or no value in the labour market, suggests an independent review published today by the Department of Education. The report suggests funding should be focused more on high-quality apprentice schemes and that all young people who do not have good English and maths GCSEs should continue to study these subjects. The review was compiled by Professor Alison Wolf, Sir Roy Griffiths Professor of Public Sector Management at King’s College London.
Vocational qualifications, such as BTEC Diplomas, City and Guilds and OCR Nationals, are taken by 16-19 year olds as an alternative to traditional academic courses. A majority of over-16s are on vocational programmes. Many lead to higher education and skilled jobs, but many of the lower level qualifications have no labour market value and young people are getting no benefit from them.
Professor Wolf’s review found that vocational qualifications do not always provide good quality workplace training and experience. ‘The system is complex, expensive and counterproductive,’ she says. ‘We have many vocational qualifications that are great and institutions which are providing an excellent education and are heavily oversubscribed. But we also have hundreds of thousands of young people taking qualifications that have little or no value.’
The review recommends that all pupils should study a core of academic subjects until they are 16, and if they do not pass GCSE English and maths, they should be made to continue. More than half of 15-16 year olds currently fail to get good grades in maths and English at GCSE level.
Professor Wolf also highlights the value of quality apprenticeships for young people aged from 16-18, with employers part-subsidised in order to offer the schemes. ‘Doing a good apprenticeship is worth far more to you in all sorts of ways than going and doing a university degree that doesn't interest you very much, and which often doesn't actually have that much value either,’ says Wolf. ‘What they need is to get into the workplace and to get some real skills that will serve them well in life.’
Education Secretary Michael Gove, who launched the review findings today with Professor Wolf, reflected on the value of ‘high-quality vocational courses,’ which he said can provide ‘access to great education and great jobs’. He said it was important to ‘fix the system’ to give all children the chance of these high quality courses. ‘We will reform league tables, the funding system, and regulation to give children honest information and access to the right courses. Implementing these reforms will be hard and take a few years but we cannot afford another decade of educational failure.’
Notes to editors
Department for Education Press release
Download the full report from the Department of Education
Professor Alison Wolf is the Sir Roy Griffiths Professor of Public Sector Management at King’s College London and specialises in the relationship between education and the labour market. She has a particular interest in training and skills policy, and universities. She has been a specialist adviser to the House of Commons select committee on education and skills; is the Council Member for the UK on the Council of the United Nations University; writes widely for the national press and is a presenter for Analysis on BBC Radio 4.
King's College London
King's College London is one of the top 25 universities in the world (2010 QS international world rankings), The Sunday Times 'University of the Year 2010/11' and the fourth oldest in England. A research-led university based in the heart of London, King's has nearly 23,000 students (of whom more than 8,600 are graduate students) from nearly 140 countries, and some 5,500 employees. King's is in the second phase of a £1 billion redevelopment programme which is transforming its estate.
King's has an outstanding reputation for providing world-class teaching and cutting-edge research. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise for British universities, 23 departments were ranked in the top quartile of British universities; over half of our academic staff work in departments that are in the top 10 per cent in the UK in their field and can thus be classed as world leading. The College is in the top seven UK universities for research earnings and has an overall annual income of nearly £450 million.
King's has a particularly distinguished reputation in the humanities, law, the sciences (including a wide range of health areas such as psychiatry, medicine, nursing and dentistry) and social sciences including international affairs. It has played a major role in many of the advances that have shaped modern life, such as the discovery of the structure of DNA and research that led to the development of radio, television, mobile phones and radar. It is the largest centre for the education of healthcare professionals in Europe; no university has more Medical Research Council Centres.
King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas', King's College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts are part of King's Health Partners. King's Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre (AHSC) is a pioneering global collaboration between one of the world's leading research-led universities and three of London's most successful NHS Foundation Trusts, including leading teaching hospitals and comprehensive mental health services. For more information, visit: www.kingshealthpartners.org
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No Surprises Software LLC Correction: Due to an editing error, we inacurately identified co-founder Robbie Friedman. The article has been updated with the correct information.
Legal professionals — lawyers, paralegals, forensics experts, investigators, researchers and librarians, for example — sometimes face an uphill battle when it comes to billing clients for their work. Especially when the time tracked is not attributable to creating traditional work products, such as briefs and trial memos. Add to that the growing trend for alternative fee arrangements, which often calls for flat rates for specific services, with the goal of decreasing legal bills. It's no secret that clients are often confused and angry when bills arrive.
Enter No Surprises Software, and its cloud-based product, Viewabill, which the company says is designed to bring transparency to legal billing. It's the creation of two entrepreneurs. David Schottenstein also launched Swiss Stays, in 2011 (it manufactures collar stays) and founded Astor & Black, a custom clothing company, in 2004, at age 21. Robbie Friedman began his career at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; and then served as general counsel at Astor & Black, managing corporate and private equity matters and external attorneys, according to the Viewabill website. The two men share the CEO title at No Surprises Software, which is based in Columbus, Ohio.
According to Schottenstein, he and Friedman were childhood friends. Schottenstein went into business at Astor & Black where he was shocked to see some of the legal bills the clothier received for outside counsel's contract review. After attending the Universty of Michigan Law School, Friedman started his career on the other side of the law firm billing process, at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Both Schottenstein and Friedman agreed that law firm billing practices detracted from the attorney-client relationship and decided to team up and work to make billing more transparent and understandable. Together they formed No Surprises Software and then solicited iconic lawyer and law professor Alan Dershowitz help to promote Viewabill. Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard University, is well known for his high profile clients (Mike Tyson, Patty Hearst, et. al) and outspoken liberal positions — but not famous for his technology prowess. He is, however, an established advocate of " accountability and transparency."
The trio launched Viewabill on March 11, to provide law firm clients — including corporate legal departments — current views of their legal costs, all calculated from specific time entries for particular matters entered into a firm's time and billing system. Its goal is to increase transparency in the lawyer-client relationship by surfacing and reporting on how client money is being spent and alerting clients to specific expenditures that reach a measured threshold, they explained.
No Surprises obtains data on matters, time-keepers, time entries, and billing rates from law firm time and billing systems and presents the data on secure web pages for clients to access via desktop or mobile web browser. If the firm's billing system is web-based, Viewabill uses its application programming interface to obtain data, albeit the amount and type of data available to No Surprises is limited to the third-party's API. If the firm's time and billing system is installed on premise, No Surprises installs a transmitter that makes read-only requests to an SQL database for data; the resultes are transmitted to Viewabill's web service via HTTPS (256-bit encryption).
Viewabill's client dashboard displays legal costs for all service engagements and matters in a bar chart that displays activity for 7, 30, or 90 days. Bars represent daily activity in hours entered in the firm's time and billing system. You can select the time of the display from the top of the page. See Figure 1.
Figure 1 shows No Surprises' home page displaying current activity by engagement and matter. Total hours and costs for the selected period (7, 30, or 90 days) are calculated at the top of the bar chart that displays daily activity. Click image to enlarge.
The dashboard view calculates costs using total hours from "blocked" and published rates. The blocked rates indicates the number of billable hours the firm has entered without disclosing the billing rate to the client. The total cost (hours x rates) is displayed as the calculated cost, plus any balance due from an unpaid invoice. The chart context changes to a specific engagement and matter, which is selected from the lower left-hand side of the dashboard, which lists matters alphabetically by law firm.
When I drilled down into a law firm's matters from the dashboard, I saw each matter the firm is working on along with the number of time entries and total hours for all entries. Alongside each matter is a button labeled "Pencils Down." When I clicked on that, a dialog box opens to prompt me to send a message to inform the law firm to stop working on the matter.
Drilling down one more time lays bare specific time entries with data on the time-keeper, cost, time entered, task descriptor, and any notes. Each individual time entry has an "i" button that displays when the time entry was made and a question mark to send the provider a question on the item. See Figure 2.
Figure 2: A "no surprise" view of specific legal service engagements and matters. Click image to enlarge.
I sent a provider a "Pencils Down" message from the dashboard, which triggered an email to the firm, asking it to stop billing for the task until further notice. The billing partner received an HTML email to reply and confirm the request. The message is returned to the dashboard via HTTPS and posted for the client to review.
When I reviewed my sent message copied to the dashboard's "Conference Room," the message informed me when I made the Pencils Down request and when I received the response. Both log entries indicated the minutes that had elapsed since I made the request and since I received an answer from the current time. I would rather see the date and time stamp surfaced in this view.
Rather than keep a periodic watch on the dashboard, I set up alerts or notifications by matter and chose a threshold amount of time or dollars for the firm to expend. When the firm reaches the threshold I set, Viewabill notifies me via email or pushes the alert to the dashboard. Then I selected a distribution schedule for all my alerts: none (disable), daily, or weekly. I would prefer to set a distribution time for each alert, rather than apply one distribution time for all notifications. Some matters may be more critical than others. See Figure 3.
Figure 3 shows the Viewabill notifications' page where you can set up alerts to notify you of threshold hours and dollars expended by a law firm. Click image to enlarge.
The Viewabill toolbar menu at the top of each page provides quick access to your dashboard and individual matters, messages, and a request form to contact your service provider aka law firm and request information for other matters. The law firm has its own interface to Viewabill to set up client access, configure matters, and set permissions to open or restrict views to time and billing data. A search feature (magnifying glass icon) is also on the menu bar.
The search form is well thought out and designed to search, or filter, time and billing data. Search filters include law firm, matter, keywords, and dates. The date filter is prominently displayed. Click the beginning date on the left calendar form and the end date on the right, pull down a menu to filter on a matter and type in keywords. See Figure 4.
Figure 4 shows the search form in Viewabill, available from the magnifying glass icon on the tool bar. Click image to enlarge.
A search for "Robert Friedman," returned all the time entries for a specified period entered by Friedman. The top of the search result form tallied all the time entries (5), totaled Friedman's billable hours (20.4), and then calculated the total cost ($3,567.00).
Legal business software such as Thomson Reuters' Serengeti and Hartford, Conn.-based Tymetrix 360 supply law firm analytics designed to give firms a competitive edge in proposals for work product. (See New Tools Put Legal Bills Under Microscope.") For corporate legal departments, Houston, Texas-based Datacert's Legal Spend Management, Andover, Mass.-based Sky Analytics, and Tymetrix's Legal Analytics are designed to help corporate counsel manage and reduce costs from outside counsel. But the current legal spend managers do not integrate directly with outside counsel's time and billing applications to retrieve, analyze, and report current time entries.
I am not aware of any product that directly competes with Viewabill, albeit it is possible for a law firm to use its own technology to surface and analyze billable time entries and create portals for client review. But in following today's trend for firms to get back to their core competency of practicing law, they may be hard pressed to compete with Viewabill's features and price.
Viewabill starts at $40 per matter per year, which can drop to $25 per matter per year with bulk discounts, said Schottenstein. Unlimited matters per year cost $35,000. Time and billing data are saved for 120 days, but a longer or shorter time period can be negotiated, added Schottenstein.
Press release.
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It's been a little more than a year since LexisNexis parted ways with Applied Discovery, a high-end document review platform they acquired in 2003. Concordance Evolution capably fills the void.
Concordance has evolved from its early form. Steven Ashbacher, vice president and general manager, Concordance for LexisNexis, says Concordance Evolution is intended for complex litigation matters burdened with enormous volumes of electronically stored information. The Concordance that litigators have been using for more than 25 years (and acquired by LexisNexis in 2006) has been re-labeled "Concordance Traditional."
After testing Evolution, I am convinced the transition is necessary, but fearful that the days of Concordance Traditional may be numbered. Ashbacher assured me there are no plans to sunset that edition, acknowledging the investment customers have put into the system, including years of training, as well as creating workflows and customization. Ashbacher anticipates that current customers will continue to use Traditional for smaller matters but turn to Evolution when they need a high-performance, scalable program to handle the inevitable ESI snowball.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
While there are some similarities between Concordance Traditional and Evolution, Evolution can stand on its own. The back end is built on Microsoft SQL and delivered through the Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser (version 8 or 9) based on a Microsoft .NET framework. Concordance Evolution also replaces the Imagebase-Opticon-Concordance Image medley with the very powerful Brava Viewer from Informative Graphics Corp. All of this delivers a powerful system that Concordance Traditional could never compete against.
Yet Concordance Evolution could still benefit from a few refinements to make it a natural selection among litigators. Customers are currently required to use IE 8 or 9, which limits browser options and eliminates the use of mobile devices. The concept search and near-native tools feel a bit clunky when compared to other similarly positioned tools on the market such as kCura Relativity and Integreon eView. Ashbacher promises an aggressive rollout schedule this year and next for both new and upgraded features.
In other document review platforms, a list of concepts is generated so that reviewers can gain an additional angle into the data, whereas in Concordance Evolution the Concept Search is baked into the Quick Search bar. And while the document viewer in Concordance Evolution is very powerful (see below), I felt that it was a tad bit sluggish when I zoomed in or switched views.
NEAR-NATIVE
The interface of Concordance Evolution is simple and straightforward. Depending on your access rights, you can navigate the entire system via the omnipresent tabs at the top for Administration, Review, and Reports. There's also a breadcrumb trail that divulges your whereabouts in the system. Clicking the trail worked much better than hitting my browser's Back button.
Concordance Traditional users will recognize the Table View in Evolution to view a list of documents. The default, however, is much more useful and called the Snippet View. It looks like a page of Google Search Results — you see the name of a document followed by a few lines of content. See Figure 1.
Figure 1: Clicking a document in Concordance Evolution brings up the near-native rendering where the Brava viewer offers options for viewing page thumbnails, adding stamps and redactions, etc. Clicking the Document Data tab shows the fielded data for the document which Concordance Traditional users will recognize as the Browse view. Click image to enlarge.
Clicking a document brings up the near-native rendering where the Brava viewer offers options for viewing page thumbnails, adding stamps and redactions, etc. Clicking the Document Data tab shows the fielded data for the document, which Concordance Traditional users will recognize as the Browse view.
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Image: Catalyst Repository Sysems, Inc.
Searching documents in e-discovery should be fast. No one has time to wait for a database to churn out search results. Fortunately, most of today's hosted document review platforms are speedy enough, but could they be faster?
That's a question that John Tredennick and his team at Catalyst Repository Systems, Inc., set out to answer several years ago when they started to push the limits of current technology in their larger cases. The "structured query language" (SQL) that most platforms use requires data to be placed in some kind of a structure before it can be searched. But most of the data involved in e-discovery is unstructured in the form of email, Word documents, text files, etc. That's why Tredennick and the Catalyst team turned to an XML-based back end for their new Insight document review platform.
I tested Catalyst Insight using a PC with Windows 7 Professional and Google's Chrome browser (version 24.0.1312.56) and found the hosted platform blazing fast for document review.
IMMEDIATE SEARCH AND RESPONSE
To give an example, I accessed an Insight account that contained 8 document collections with a total of 8,981,995 records. I knew there were that many records in the database because a counter in the lower right corner updated itself in response to anything I typed.
Since one of the document collections was the Enron data set, I jumped right into the "Free-Form Search" box and searched for one of my favorite emails from the collection with the words "lunch" and "shred." As soon as I typed "lunch" my record count jumped down to 83,191 in under a second. When I typed "shred" it immediately plummeted to 52. I hit the Search button and pulled up the email I was looking for: "This week is not good [for lunch]. I have too large a pile of documents to shred. Next week is better."
The story here isn't that I found my email — I can perform the same search in any platform and (probably) get the same result. The story is how responsive Catalyst Insight was to my search. I don't want to simply call it "fast," I would describe it as "immediately responsive" because the system was running my search in the background before I even hit the search button. I could experiment with search terms and immediately see the number of potential results.
MULTIPLE SEARCH OPTIONS FOR YOUR DOCUMENT COLLECTION
When you log into Catalyst Insight, the primary navigation appears on the left side with small square icons for Search, Folders, Review Projects, Monitors, and the Administrator Console. By default, you're brought to the Free-Form Search screen which I used in the example above. See Figure 1. There are some Advanced settings here (stemming, case sensitivity, etc.) but if you want to just start typing you're free to do so. There's also a "Search Assist" box that allows you to select a specific field to search if you wish.
Figure 1: The Free-Form Search screen. Click image to enlarge.
But if you're taking the exploratory route in your search, you're better off starting with "Faceted Search." See Figure 2. The Facets here are based on the fields that appear in the main window as list boxes. You can bring up the author box and add names to your search. Next, you can add another Facet such as "doctype" to narrow your search. The "docdate" field comes up as a nice visual graph allowing you to drag your cursor over the relevant timeframe.
Figure 2: Faceted Search. Click image to enlarge.
The "Tracked Search" option allows you to generate useful reports on search terms. See Figure 3. You build your search by clicking the plus sign for each box and then entering your terms. If you already have a list of search terms that someone composed, you can copy and paste them into the "Delimited Entry" tab as long as they're separated by a comma, semicolon or hard return. You'll have to spend some time building your search here, but once you're done you can select "Create Report" from the Search Options at the top.
The Report provides details on the document collections and folders that were searched, followed by a visual chart of the documents as per doctype (which can be switched to a pie graph, doughnut, column, etc.). The most helpful information is at the bottom where it lists the keywords you used with the number of hits recorded. It also lists the similar words that were NOT included in your search. This report is extremely helpful when you're arguing about search terms with the other side.
Figure 3: Tracked Search report. Click image to enlarge.
VIEWING YOUR DOCUMENTS
When you're ready to view documents, Insight lists them in "Table View" by default. See Figure 4. Site Administrators can customize this default view or users (as allowed) can create their own views. All the tools are there to customize your list of columns but it did take me a few minutes to find everything (e.g., adding a new column requires clicking on a dropdown in an already existing column).
Figure 4: Table View. Click image to enlarge.
To see the content of a document, simply click the row and a Preview window pops open on the right side of the screen. See Figure 5. Nothing fancy here as the Preview window only shows the textual rendition of the file, but it does highlight search terms. You can also click "Show Fields" to see a list of all the metadata associated with the document.
Figure 5: Preview the content of a document. Click image to enlarge.
Clicking the "Launch Detail" button will open the document in a separate browser window where you can view either the text of the document or a PDF. The embedded viewer worked great for every file type I tested but if you need to view the native file you can download it and use local software on your computer.
The bottom right corner of the Document Viewer shows "Related" documents (e.g., an email and its attachments) and "Duplicates" pulled from the database. Checkboxes allow you to tag the groups as appropriate. See Figure 6.
Figure 6: Document Viewer. Click image to enlarge.
While the Table View will satisfy most review needs, Insight also shows the number of documents per author in the customizable Chart View, or graphs the total sizes of the files by selecting the Size option. See Figure 7.
Figure 7: Chart View. Click image to enlarge
There's also a "Communication Tracker" and "Communication Report" that visually presents how emails were exchanged between individuals. See Figure 8.
Figure 8: Communication Tracker. Click image to enlarge
REDACTING, PRINTING, AND EXPORTING
Insight fully supports redactions for documents, but you'll need to have permission to do so from the site administrator. Documents must be converted to PDF first before any redactions can be applied. When you click the "Redact" button, you'll need to choose a Redaction Set in which to save the redacted document before continuing. Once you go through all of that, Insight offers a nice set of tools for creating redactions and stamps.
The "Print" option allows you to batch together selected documents as a compiled .pdf or .zip file. This is a tad confusing since this feature doesn't actually send the documents to a local printer, but the tool is an excellent way for support personnel to generate a combined PDF of the selected documents complete with separator sheets and custom PDF bookmarks.
There's also an "Export" feature which allows one to select and download structured information about the documents. You can choose the fields you want included and export them as an Excel file, .csv, Microsoft Word, etc. This is an excellent method for creating a privilege log.
CONCLUSION
I found Catalyst Insight to be blazing fast compared to numerous other review platforms. The Catalyst team promises more tweaks and updates very soon including a process for lawyers to help train the system for predictive coding.
Using Insight makes me believe I've seen the future of how we will search "Big Data." It's not that anything's wrong with our current systems, but the fact that a veteran vendor like Catalyst is looking to new technologies tells me that it may be time for others to start considering other alternatives as well.
PRICING INFORMATION
Prices start as low as $35 per gigabyte that includes project management. There are no separate user fees. Rates are adjusted for larger volumes. Catalyst also offer terabyte rates for corporations and law firms who enter into enterprise agreements.
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Brett Burney is principal of Burney Consultants, where he works with law firms and corporations on managing electronic data for litigation matters. Email: burney@burneyconsultants.com. You must be signed in to comment on an articleSign In or Subscribe
Encase Forensic 7.5 Guidance Software, Inc., makes computer forensics, security, and e-discovery software. The Los Angeles-based digital and e-discovery investigations company upgraded on October 11, 2012, its EnCase Forensic product, which is designed to forensically collect data and conduct investigations. Law firms and legal departments use EnCase to collect, examine, and analyze data for evidence in corporate and government investigations, civil litigation, and criminal trials.
EnCase Forensic can acquire and analyze data from Microsoft Windows, Linux, AIX, Apple OS X, and Sun/Oracle Solaris operating systems. The application supports handling, reviewing, and reporting on potential evidence that includes deleted files, file slack, and unallocated space. EnCase Forensic also makes exact duplicates of original data, which can be verified by hash and Cyclic Redundancy Check values, to transfer evidence to clients, government officials, or outside counsel.
Guidance Software boasts that the latest version of EnCase Forensic, 7.05, processes data three times faster than its predecessor. It does this without overutilizing the CPU, using memory and ample disk cache. The new version lets you select a subset of files from collected data for prioritized processing, so you can view and analyze some potential evidence while EnCase Forensic continues to work on the corpus of a collection. You can view the early results of keyword searches while the application completes the search query in the background and simultaneously view multiple records as well as email threads and related conversations.
Other features included in v7:
• Acquire data from supported smartphones.
• Embed hyperlinks in exported reports.
• Case analyzer can indicate computer activity from the metadata of files collected.
I took EnCase Forensic for a test drive on my Lenovo ThinkPad T520 (dual core Intel i7-2860QM CPU at 2.5 GHz, 8 gigabytes RAM) running Windows 7 (64-bit) operating system, which is recommended by Guidance Software. A separate, external SATA 7200 RPM hard disk for evidence storage is also recommended. I stayed with the internal Intel SSD 320 Series 2.5-inch drive (160 GB) that shipped with my system, which required 425 megabytes of free disk space to install the application.
I found EnCase v7 very usable, without a steep learning curve to create a case, collect evidence, analyze data, and report results.
TEST DRIVE
The EnCase Forensic graphical user interface can't be much easier to use to start a case. One-click access to recent cases are displayed prominently, with case file actions to start a new case and open an existing case just below. See Figure 1.
Figure 1 shows the Encase Forensic graphical user interface. Guidance Software's Windows executable file opens up to a familiar browser-like interface with hyperlinks to begin workflows to open an existing case or start a new case.
When an existing case is selected, the case page becomes the focal point of the UI with context-specific tasks such as add evidence. When you drill down into the evidence of a case, the UI changes to a view to examine evidence in a troika of panes: a hierarchical tree view, a table list view of a selected item in the hierarchy, and a view of discreet evidence selected from the table view. EnCase Forensic uses Oracle Corp.'s Outside In technology to view evidence without the native application installed on the local machine.
I started a new case and a dialog box displayed to enter the case name, case path, and evidence cache locations. To speed the encase.exe program, which is a multithreaded application that calls various modules to accomplish tasks, Guidance Software uses disk cache. So if you want the benefits of the faster EnCase Processor in version 7, I would follow the software maker's advice and use a large, external SATA 7200 RPM hard drive.
After I selected name and file locations for my new case, I clicked OK and the UI changed context to add evidence to the case. I was prompted to choose the type and location of the evidence such as a local device connected to my computer, a raw image file (e.g., FAT32, NTFS, Solaris UFS, HPUX HFS, VMware's VxFS, and Netware), an existing evidence file (an EnCase image file used to store digital evidence acquired from computer memory, a hard disk), a storage volume image, or logical files.
I plugged in a USB thumb drive and selected the new local device for acquisition. I had the option to preview and acquire physical memory used by applications, such as msword.exe as well as the programs that enabled desktop synchronization with Google Drive and Microsoft SkyDrive. Note that if the target device has antivirus software running, the driver used to access memory may destabilize the acquiring machine. So disable any antivirus programs during acquisition. See Figure 2.
Figure 2: EnCase Forensic UI to add a local device to acquire evidence.
After I selected the USB drive and physical memory for specific applications, another dialog box opened to specify metadata for each targeted acquisition. I had to repeat information already produced in the case metadata, such as case number and case examiner. After I filled in the metadata for each acquisition, I kicked off the acquisition process and EnCase Forensic began to acquire the external device and portions of physical memory, using an ample amount of CPU, disk, and memory, but leaving me plenty of resources to engage other activities. See Figure 3.
Figure 3: A view of Windows 7 Resource Monitor while EnCase Forensic acquired evidence from an external drive and physical memory.
ADDING LOGICAL EVIDENCE
After acquiring evidence from an external drive and memory, I directed my attention to a Logical Evidence File that Guidance Software provided for my review. I opened a new case and selected the option to add the evidence file (.ex01). Before I took another step I verified that the acquisition hash made at the time the file was acquired and the verification hash were the same. If not, the file would have been corrupt or tampered with.
The next thing for me to do was to verify that the time zone settings for EnCase Forensic matched the time zone settings for the evidence file. This is another opportunity for automation, as I had to traverse registry settings in the evidence file to ferret the information out. I mounted the appropriate Windows Registry file to view the time zone of the source of the evidence file. I noted that I could mount a file for viewing and calculate the unallocated space as well as find deleted content.
After I viewed the file structure (i.e., mounted the appropriate Registry file), I found that the evidence was gathered from a source using Pacific Standard Time. I changed the time zone setting in EnCase Forensic to match that.
ENCASE EVIDENCE PROCESSOR
Before processing the evidence file, I knew that I wanted to index the evidence and exclude information that would not be evidence, i.e., National Institute of Standards Technology's National Software Registry Library Reference Data Set (version 2.38). From the EnCase Forensic tools menu, I clicked Manage Hash Library and pointed the library laid out on my local disk. Then I selected the evidence file and clicked "Process Evidence" from the menu. A dialog box opened up.
I enabled "Recover Folders," which allowed me to recover files that were deleted or corrupted and to locate hidden files on FAT and NTFS volumes. I also enabled Hash analysis, which allowed me to create MD5 or SHA1 hash values to compare to other evidence in other files, if the need arose. Double clicking on "Hash Analysis" opens another dialog box to select MD5 or SHA1 or both.
Figure 4. EnCase Forensic options to process evidence files.
I opted to expand compound files, i.e., extract archive files, and find internet artifacts that included browser bookmarks and history. The options to index text and metadata included setting a maximum word length (default = 64 characters) and exclude all files in the Hash Library. I opted to include private information and load a number of keywords to index.
Other processing options included the ability to collect custom registry keys on Windows systems (System Info Parser); recover instant messages from AOL, MSN, and Yahoo messengers (IM Parser); find file fragments, file slack, and unallocated file space (File Carver); and collect contents of Windows event logs (Windows Event Log Parser). Once I set the processing options, I saved them to a configuration file (*.EnProc) to reuse them on other evidence files and clicked OK to process the .ex01 file.
Once processing was complete, I pulled down the "View" menu and selected "Search." A Search tab opened up with pull-down menus for search conditions, filters, a function to load saved searches, and features to bookmark and tag files.
I viewed my keyword hits in one click from the key icon available from the search menu. The results displayed the number of files that contained a keyword and the number of times a keyword appeared in the entire collection. The file custodian's name, "Tyler," appeared in the most items and had more hits than any other keywords, which listed persons of interest in the case. The next highest was "John," so I searched with the word "John" (227 hits, 136 items). I combined the search terms ("John AND Tyler") and narrowed my search to 53 documents. I found a few documents and emails worth returning to. I highlighted those files and clicked "Go To" and the UI changed to the logical location of the file in the file system. I bookmarked these files and right-clicked them to "Find Relevant" files by name and see threaded email conversations.
The case file template that I had been working with since identifying my case as a "forensic" investigation came with default tags to mark files for "Review," "Add to Report," "Follow Up with Submitter," "Ignore," and "Important." I added a "Privilege" tag. Then I took an email message from a search of "John OR Tyler" with a subject matter of "Still in Business" and searched for the email conversation. I selected all the files from the search result showing the conversation and tagged them privileged.
SMARTPHONE ACQUISITION
I plugged my Droid Bionic (System 6.7.246.XT875) running Android version 4.0.4 into the Lenovo ThinkPad used for this review. Per Guidance Software, I set Android security to allow unknown sources to run on the device and enabled USB debugging. After a couple of starts and stops, I received the message that EnCase Forensic 7 does not yet support the OS on my platform. Drat.
I loaded into my case an example evidence file from Guidance Software that was captured from an HTC EVO 4G running Google Android. Once loaded, the smartphone acquisition was saved into an evidence file for EnCase Forensic to process, analyze, and search the evidence like any other evidence file acquisition. And I did not need any additional hardware devices or software.
With two evidence files loaded into my case, I simultaneously searched both files and my results window reflected hits from both files. In addition to the universal search, placing the two evidence files in the same case also allowed me to tag files of interest from both files and relate them in a report. Analyzing multiple evidence files can be complex, but EnCase Forensic streamlines finding hits in files.
From a table view of search results, I viewed individual items in "Transcript" view, which provides the plain text version of content. Rather than using the "Find" and "Find Next" functions to search for hits in the file, I clicked on "Compressed View" to only see the hit highlights in the file context. Clicking on the "Next Item" button (or "Previous Item" button) scrolls through my search results quickly to find and review hit highlights. See Figure 5.
Figure 5. EnCase Forensic "Compressed View" option to speed through views of hit highlights from a table list of search results.
If I am the only member of my team with EnCase Forensic, I will want to make evidence available for review without everyone looking over my shoulder. Guidance Software developed the "Review Package" option to package up potential evidence for an outside reviewer. I selected a number of images from a filtered view of two logical evidence files. From the Search tab menu "Review Package," I selected "Export" and a dialog box opened for me to package up the selected items and choose the metadata to attend the items in a list view provided by an HTML application file (.hta), which can only be viewed in Internet Explorer. See Figure 6.
Figure 6. This image shows how to export evidence from EnCase Forensic using the "Review Package" tool to enable outside review and comments. (See an image of the resulting .hta file here.)
At any time during my investigation, EnCase Forensic includes reporting options available from a report template that details the investigation and examination of individual file types such as email, internet artifacts, documents, and photographs.
CONCLUSION
Guidance Software has made it easy for an EnCase Forensic v7 to collect, process, analyze, and report forensic evidence from computer and smartphone sources. Without formal training, I feel confident that I can use new version to forensically collect and process evidence for trial. But looking at the 500-plus pages of the user guide, I have barely scratched the surface of EnCase Forensic.
PRICING INFORMATION
EnCase Forensic version 7 starts at $3,495 with volume discounts available.
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Minneapolis, Minn.-based NightOwl Discovery, an e-discovery managed service provider, released nVelope Collection Kit 1.0 at LegalTech New York. The nVelope product is a portable collection kit designed for custodians to collect their own files from computers running Microsoft Windows XP operating system and above.
NightOwl's new product is similar to Guidance Software Encase Portable and Ricoh Americas Corp.'s Remlox remote collection technology (manufactured by Hill Schwartz Spilker Keller LLC aka HSSK). These and other self-collection tools are designed to allow custodians to collect files from a computer without technical support. Generally see " Compare & Contrast: E-Discovery Self-Collection Tools."
NightOwl distinguishes the nVelope self-collection tool from other offerings by its ease of use and reuse for custodians to self-collect data for litigation or investigation — for $500, you own the product. The nVelope software is packaged in a one-terabyte USB hard drive that I plugged into a Lenovo ThinkPad T520. The external drive is not bootable and did not offer me any auto-play options to open the device or automatically run a program on the root of the drive.
I opened the external drive and ran the NCKLauncher.exe file at the root of the file system. The main page opened to perform one of three types of collections on the drives local to the ThinkPad. See Figure 1.
Figure 1 shows NightOwl's graphical user interface to begin self-collection with nVelope. Click image to enlarge.
nVelope's main collection window opens with options to collect the entire drive, selected folders, or engage a Smart Collection, which is a policy-oriented collection based on a search for selected file types associated with email databases, chat archives, graphics and multimedia files, documents, archives such as .zip and .rar, and/or spreadsheets such as Excel and .csv files. See Figure 2.
Figure 2 shows NightOwl's nVelope interface to engage a Smart Collection. Click image to enlarge.
If I had a question on what file types are collected for the various policy collections, NightOwl includes a .pdf file with information on what file types belong to each data type.
Once I made my selection, the collection started automatically. The data on all local disks that matched my collection criteria were collected and saved to the nVelope Collection Kit device. During collection, the NightOwl process opened seven threads, which incurred 10-11 percent utilization of one core processor.
Collecting selected folders was as easy as selecting folders from a Windows Explorer interface and clicking Start Collection.
Once the collection was finished, nVelope stored the files in a password-protected, encrypted 7-Zip file archive on the nVelope Collection Kit device. The password needed to review the archive is supplied with the device at purchase. In my case, the collected file archives were copied to a "Collected Data" folder on the terabyte drive using a filename convention that includes the computer name of the collected computer and the date, e.g., T520-WIN7_01-30-13_17-42-40_Folders.7z.
Along with the archive of collected files, nVelope saved an audit file. The audit file supplied the metadata to the collection, which included the collection time, computer name, user login name and the user's permissions to the file system. In my case: admin.
The audit file details the collection type, e.g., folder collection, and the data types selected, if any. If no data types were selected, "any" files are collected. The file also detailed the number of files detected on the drive, the number collected, collection errors, the state of the file system, and the time the collection was complete.
CONCLUSION
If a custodian can use a Windows computer, he or she can easily collect data from that computer using NightOwl's nVelope. The fact that you can reuse nVelope to collect from other custodians without incurring another charge makes the $500 self-collection device a deal.
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