An early Christmas present from Cernam: Capture & Preserve preview
In January we will be launching Capture & Preserve, our purpose-built technology for evidential capture of online content. For a preview of what’s to come take a look at the preview video below, which shows some of the key features in the context of a commercial lawsuit.
Cernam Capture & Preserve allows for the forensically-sound capture of online evidence including content from basic websites, message boards, social networking sites, cloud-based services and web-based enterprise applications. In designing Capture & Preserve we set out to bring forensic rigour to online evidence, moving this field away from screenshots and printouts, towards the type of trustworthy evidence required for digital forensics.
We look forward to sharing more details in the New Year. If you would like to hear more about Cernam Capture & Preserve in the meantime we would love to hear from you, either by email (info@cernam.com) or on Twitter (@CernamOE).
This Week in Online Evidence – June 24th 2011
Highlight: Forget everything you thought you knew about domain names
Our highlight for this week is a change which will have an enormous impact for years to come: the decision by ICANN to introduce a new regime for top-level domain names. ICANN is the top-level governance body for Internet names and numbers, primarily meaning the domain name system which is the foundation of web browsing, email and other Internet services.
In recent years ICANN has approved the creation of additional top-level domains (or “TLD’s”)such as “.aero”, “.museum” and “.asia”, however real-world of these new TLD’s has been limited and for most Internet users the web still revolves around “.com”, with perhaps limited usage of other long-standing TLD’s such as “.org” or “.edu”. This week’s announcement means that arbitrary names can now be used for TLD’s for the first time, irrespective of objective need or overlap with existing TLD’s.
Emails as evidence in court
BSkyB Ltd & SSSL Ltd Versus EDS LLC & HP Enterprise Services UK Ltd (EWHC 86 (TCC) Case No: HT-06-311)
Background
This is one of the most important commercial litigation cases of the last few years. In 2000, BSkyB Ltd contracted EDS to create a new customer relationship management (CRM) system. The project ran into many problems early on and EDS were eventually removed from the project.
“Sky [BSkyB] hired EDS in 2000 to create a new customer management system, but terminated the £48 million contract in 2002 after what it described as a “woeful” performance”. It then filed a lawsuit against EDS and completed the job itself in-house.” (Emma Barnett, The Telegraph)
“Lawyers for Sky [BSkyB] told the judge during the high court case that the project eventually took six years to complete and if the contractor had been honest about its abilities, BSkyB would have chosen a different company.” (Jason Deans, The Guardian)
BSkyB began High Court proceedings against EDS in 2004 for fraudulent misrepresentation, negligence and breach of contract, alleging that their main contact in EDS had deliberately lied on several occasions about the timeline, cost of the project and other items.
