Do you really need to spend around $1000 on a cell phone exam?
 
Maybe! If you are planning on capturing evidence that could show up in court, then yeah . . . get an analyst who uses a professional tool (aka really expensive) like Cellebrite to acquire and preserve the ESI. They have great reporting and searching capabilities, and we use this quite a bit.
 
Maybe not! Sometimes clients just want a record of text messages that is fairly reliable, where admissibility is not an issue. In that case, go download a great little consumer program called iMazing, which is terrific at grabbing stuff from an iPhone or iPad; and the reporting is great. For Android, try G Cloud Backup.
Technical Surveillance Counter Measure Surveys
Our requests for these are on the rise. We used to get these primarily from paranoid people with money to burn, but we are finding trackers, compromised office phones, etc. Also called “bug sweeps,” these are complicated procedures involving both technical and investigative expertise.
 
Our guys show up with $150k in devices called OSCOR Blue, TALAN, Orion 24, etc., but the real value is in the expertise of the analysts. Actually, the real value is in the peace of mind that clients always have when these gigs are done. FYI- the hit rate on these sweeps is under 10%, which means there is a 90% chance that there was nothing there.