Report Writing
I have worked with examiners who loved getting down to the bits and bytes of investigation. No one worked harder as they examined the digital evidence, tracking the digital breadcrumbs until they had the evidence they needed. They were intelligent and brilliant, and if I had committed a digital crime, I would not want them to investigate it. It had nothing to do with their ability to investigate and everything to do with their ability to write a report. To say their report was lacking is a massive understatement.
Report writing is one of the hardest things you can do as a digital forensic investigator. You must take a very technical subject and explain it in a manner that a non-technical person will understand while not making any assumptions about the potential user or the digital evidence.
We will cover the following topics in this chapter:
- Effective note taking
- Writing a valuable report