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Are the raw data, technical reports, or peer-reviewed publications from these forensic investigations publicly available, and where can researchers access them?
Executive summary
Public availability of raw data, technical reports, and peer‑reviewed publications from forensic investigations varies widely by sector, case, and provider: commercial firms like SkySafe describe producing “courtroom‑ready reports” and retaining in‑house expert analysis for clients rather than publishing raw datasets [1]. Government and standards bodies such as NIST and the Council of Europe’s CyberSEE work to publish guidance, process maps and conference outputs to improve forensic practice, but individual case-level raw data are not shown as publicly released in the provided results [2] [3].
1. What companies and vendors publish—or keep—investigation artifacts?
Private service vendors typically treat extracted device logs, flight records, and device metadata as client‑controlled evidence rather than open data. SkySafe’s Forensics as a Service emphasizes extracting flight logs, serial numbers and onboard metadata and producing “prosecutor‑ready reports” and expert testimony for agencies, which implies reports and analyses are delivered to customers and courts rather than posted as open raw datasets [1]. The repeated focus in industry pieces on toolchains and commercial suites suggests vendors expect clients and prosecutors to receive artifacts under controlled channels, not public repositories [4] [1].
2. What public-sector or standards outputs exist and where researchers can look
Standards and institutional outputs are explicitly published and searchable: NIST publishes standards, process maps and special publications (for example, OSAC process maps and draft SP‑800 series items) which are intended to be public resources for forensic practice improvement [3]. The Council of Europe / EU CyberSEE project organizes conferences and publishes summaries of events and capacity‑building work such as the Digital Forensics Conference 2025 in Belgrade — those event writeups, workshop materials and harmonised SOP efforts are accessible through CyberSEE web pages [2]. Researchers should start with NIST and CyberSEE portals to find publicly released guidance, drafts and conference outputs [3] [2].
3. Peer‑reviewed research and academic dissemination
Forensic research commonly appears as academic studies and conference presentations rather than tied‑to specific operational case raw data. ScienceDaily aggregates and highlights research advances (gunshot residue methods; age‑at‑death estimation; AI tools for traumatic brain injury) which point to peer‑reviewed work—those articles link back to the original research teams and journals rather than to operational case files [5] [6]. Conference programs (e.g., Digital Forensics Workshop at ITASEC26, Forensic Research‑2025 events) solicit papers and often publish proceedings or abstracts, which are a primary channel for researchers to access methods and results [7] [8]. Researchers should follow academic conferences and ScienceDaily links to the underlying journals for peer‑reviewed outputs [5] [7].
4. Why raw operational data are often unavailable or restricted
Multiple sources imply why raw datasets from real investigations stay closed: evidentiary chain‑of‑custody, privacy (patient or user identifiers), legal restrictions, and prosecution strategy push vendors and agencies to control distribution. The SkySafe offering emphasizes chain of custody and court testimony, which signals operational data are handled as sensitive evidence for legal proceedings rather than open science [1]. NHS‑related incident handling described in reporting about Synnovis notes investigations dealt with “unstructured, incomplete and fragmented” stolen data and that notification of affected organisations was underway—this illustrates privacy and case management considerations that limit public dataset publication [9].
5. Paths researchers can use to access materials or comparable datasets
Where raw case data are unavailable, researchers can: (a) use published standards, process maps and draft SPs from NIST to replicate methods and assumptions [3]; (b) obtain conference proceedings and workshop papers from events like the Digital Forensics Workshop/ITASEC and CyberSEE conference summaries to access methodological detail [7] [2]; (c) pursue data‑sharing agreements or FOI-type requests with agencies or vendors when lawful and appropriate, recognizing vendors like SkySafe position their service outputs as client‑facing [1]. For method validation, peer‑reviewed studies reported via ScienceDaily and forensic journals provide experimental data and protocols researchers can reimplement [5] [6].
6. Competing perspectives and hidden incentives to note
Vendors emphasize service reliability and courtroom admissibility (SkySafe) while industry commentary stresses rapid preservation and toolchain innovation; these priorities can conflict with open‑science norms [1] [7]. Standards bodies (NIST, OSAC) push transparency via public standards, but their focus is normative and procedural rather than publishing sensitive operational evidence [3]. The drive by private firms to sell “forensics as a service” creates an incentive to keep detailed forensic artifacts proprietary; conversely, academic and public‑sector actors push reproducibility through standards and published studies [1] [5] [3].
Limitations: available sources do not mention any centralized public repository that distributes raw operational forensic case data from vendors or law‑enforcement investigations; they document standards, conferences, vendor services and academic outputs as the main publicly accessible materials [1] [3] [2] [5].