8 Introduction
Table 1-1. How Big is a Zettabyte?
* Roger E. Bohn, et. al., How Much Information? 2009, Global Information Industry Center,
University of California, San Diego (January, 2010).
When suspected criminals have been charged and computer and other digital
assets seized, digital forensics professionals are put under enormous pressure to
process and analyze potential evidence in a very short space of time and in
environments less than well-suited to ensuring evidentiary requirements. Where
whole organizations are suspected of criminal or terrorist activity, the number of
devices to be analyzed can escalate dramatically.
Digital forensics provides a means for acquiring data retrieved from computers
or other digital devices (mobile phones, games consoles, flash drives, GPSs,
etc.), and the scientific examination and analysis of that data in a manner that
ensures the information can be used in a court of law. The Dell Digital Forensics
Solution comprises the first end-to-end, true enterprise-level solution for law
enforcement, corporate and government security agencies, and e-discovery
organizations, providing all the hardware, software, and service and support
necessary to collect, triage, ingest or image, store, analyze, report, and archive
digital evidence.
Using Dell’s scalable and affordable enterprise server and storage hardware
and—depending on the requirements of your software environment—Oracle
database systems on the back end, a combination of Dell’s ruggedized laptops
and SPEKTOR software in the field, and full service and support from Dell,
Kilobyte (KB) 1,000 bytes 2 KB a typewritten page
Megabyte (MB) 1,000,000 bytes 5 MB the complete works of
Shakespeare
Gigabyte (GB) 1,000,000,000 bytes 20 GB a good collection of the works
of Beethoven
Terabyte (TB) 1,000,000,000,000 bytes 10 TB an academic research library
Petabyte (PB) 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes 20 PB production of hard-disk drives
annually
Exabyte (EB) 1,000,000,000,000,000,000
bytes
5 EB all words ever spoken by
human beings
Zettabyte (ZB) 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
bytes
2 ZB expected data created
globally during 2010*