Nowadays, how do you find a “digital smoking gun” if suspects have dozens, or sometimes even hundreds, of devices and use a similar number of social media accounts? How do you make such a large number of digital traces both easily accessible and searchable for an investigation team?

The Netherlands Police and the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) have been working together on this challenge for a long time. In the process, digital forensics as a service (DFaaS) has been developed and continues to evolve, which, in addition to the Netherlands Police, is now used by virtually all Dutch investigation services. It’s a continuous quest with great successes and significant learning opportunities and areas for improvement.