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The digital forensics industry is expected to surpass the one billion dollar mark by the end of 2012 and as the number of electronically stored information (ESI (News - Alert)) increases the sector will see a dramatic increase. Mobile devices such as smartphones and the content associated with it will create larger amounts of data. As the amount of data increases more digital forensic service providers are entering the market with an annual increase of 14.8 percent until 2012. The Tarantula 2.0 platform by EDEC provides Chinese phone forensics with analysis tools for public and private organizations that need investigative tools.

Digital forensic operators provide many different services to access data from mobile devices. The service can be as simple as recovering data from a locked phone to helping law enforcement officers in apprehending criminals who commit fraud, identity theft and crimes against minors by accessing encrypted and erased files.

"In an industry where technology advances at the speed of light, it is our responsibility to provide investigators with the most advanced technology to address their needs. Tarantula 2.0 offers our customers vastly more capability in a, light, compact kit, and powered by USB making it highly portable," said Ryan Judy, Sales Manager for EDEC.

Tarantula was specifically designed to address the Chinese manufactured chipset mobile devices because these products were rapidly gaining a foothold in the global market place. The problem with these phones is they were and some still are off-brand name or illegitimate phones with components not recognized by the industry. This made them very hard to analyze and as the Chinese chipsets started entering the mainstream market and being adopted by brand name companies an analysis tool had to be created for these devices. Tarantula was created in October 2011 and it supports extraction from all the major Chinese manufactured chipsets.

The hardware and software of the Tarantula 2.0 is designed to be portable so law enforcement officers and special investigators will be able to use it anywhere without peripheral attachments. The unit only weighs 2.5 pounds with a 7.5" x 9" x 4" profile. It is powered by a USB and it provides full file system analysis of the device being accessed. It is able to get PIN codes, media files, multiple IMEI numbers, and decode Android (News - Alert) MTK phones.

Judy went on to say, "Mobile forensic investigations are frequently done outside a lab environment. Our customers have been asking for these improvements from us and Tarantula 2.0 delivers. Law enforcement, military and civilian examiners are often in the field, under difficult conditions, working to perform forensics or acquire intelligence on problematic devices."

Thirty percent of cell phones in the world are based on chipsets made in China and the number is going to increase to more than 50 percent as the production of these devices increases to more than 800 million units. With so many manufacturers and lack of standardization with Chinese made mobile phones the tools Tarantula offers provides a one stop shop for digital forensics specialists.

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