CYFOR Blog

MP David Lidington pays a visit to CYFOR’s secure digital forensics laboratory in Aylesbury.

Member of Parliament for Aylesbury, Rt Hon David Lidington, recently visited CYFOR’s south of England forensics lab and met with its team of digital investigators.

The MP travelled from Westminster to the Aylesbury laboratory on Monday, saying his reason for the visit was to learn more about one of the high-tech businesses within his constituency. The visit, which took place during the busy run-up to the general election, gave Mr Lidington the opportunity to learn about CYFOR’s fascinating work within the areas of digital forensics and eDisclosure.

Mr Lidington said:  “I was delighted to have the opportunity to visit local business CYFOR in Aylesbury on Monday. While I was visiting I had the opportunity to learn about the cutting-edge work CYFOR are doing in the areas of digital forensics, electronic disclosure, and cyber security.

CYFOR have a very impressive track record working on specialist fraud cases for clients including Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs and the Serious Fraud Office as well as private companies. This helps to protect public and private interests against criminal activity of all kinds.”

CYFOR’s services include digital investigations on some of the most high profile criminal cases including, terrorism, serious fraud and murders, as well as analysis of evidence in civil litigations between companies. Mr Lidington was given a guided tour of the secure facility by Director, Mr Keith Cottenden and Head of Investigations, Mr Adrian Wood.

“Mr Lidington was shown an example of a historic case that reached the Old Bailey involving mobile phone forensics acquisition,” said Mr Wood. “He was particularly keen to learn about how, in this particular murder trial, outputs from SMS text messages were used to demonstrate a pattern of activity to support the prosecution’s case.”

The MP, who is also Minister of State for Europe, was shown some of the software tools used in digital forensics, which maintain the all-important chain of custody and can recover maliciously destroyed or intentionally deleted files from computers, mobile phones and servers.

Mr Cottenden spoke with Mr Lidington about what he regards to be the increasing and excessive burden of accreditation and compliance that is required of commercial digital forensic service providers.

Mr Cottenden, who is a well-regarded figure in the industry, said: “Commercial digital forensics laboratories such as ours are required to have ISO17025 if they want public sector work. This element of the existing regulatory regime is, in my view, not fit for purpose and creates a bureaucratic burden that could in fact drive standards down instead of up. I am pleased to say Mr Lidington was open to looking into the inequity created by this increasing legislation and will raise it at the Home Office.”

Mr Lidington said: “I look forward to hearing about the great work that CYFOR continue to do in this industry under the leadership of their Director, Keith Cottenden, and I am sure that they will go from strength to strength.”