Jan 18
Guidance Software has updated its widely used but decade-old evidence file format, which now supports data encryption, officials said last week.
The format, which determines how information is stored in Guidance’s EnCase series of e-discovery and forensic applications, works with the current EnCase 7, itself several years in the making. It also works on older version 6 releases, but not version 5, so the previous format called E01 is still supported.
Because of the new format, files are now far more secure. In E01, files only had passwords, but the new Ex01 uses asymmetric keys and 256-bit encryption. That makes lost or stolen files extraordinarily difficult to crack, although hackers have shown that it is possible with that encryption method.