Last June 19th, Lorraine Spector and Jon Shamah did a great presentation on LOCARD project at the EEMA Annual Conference 2019, focused on "Managing Criminal Evidence and Cross-border Chain of Custody".

On May 9 - 10, 19 partners from different disciplines met in Athens to start working together in the fight against cybercrime. Working for a safer Europe is a priority!

The exponential increase in the volume of generated data together with the systems decentralisation open a wide window of opportunity in the field of cybercrime. This is one of the most important concerns of governments, societies and people, and it implies a high expense and risk for any society, weakens confidence in the Communication and Information Technologies and threatens international peace and stability.

In its fight against cybercrime, one of the most difficult challenges for the European Union is to homogenise the jurisdictions of the Member States. The procedure needed to obtain digital evidence, as well as its recognition in a court of justice, should follow a standardised procedure accepted by most countries within the Union. This procedure should guarantee the origin of the evidence and the integrity of the chain of custody.

Digital evidence is nowadays an integral part of criminal investigations and it is not only focussed on cybercrime specific cases, but also on determining criminal behaviour such as financial fraud, theft of intellectual property, industrial espionage and terrorist networks that constantly use the Internet and cyberspace. Given the ubiquity of digital devices, the correct management of digital evidence is extremely important.

LOCARD aims to develop a holistic platform aimed at ensuring the chain of custody throughout the flow of forensic analysis. It is a distributed and trusted platform that allows the storage of digital evidence metadata using blockchain.