The Rise Of IoT Forensics: Challenges And Opportunities

IoT, or the Internet of Things, has been a fashionable buzzword for the past decade. IoT devices cover a wide gamut of devices and gizmos, ranging from wearables that track our biometrics, sensors that control our HVAC and security, to home automation that elevates our creature comforts at home.

While the privacy and security implications of IoT devices have been extensively discussed, their evidentiary value in litigation is often overlooked. For example, could the activity logs from a smart door lock be used to demonstrate the ingress and egress of a specific individual in a legal case? Similarly, could biometric data -- such as heartbeats tracked by a smartwatch -- be employed to corroborate an individual's activities during a particular timeframe? While these types of evidence have been used in criminal trials, they are infrequently discussed or utilized in civil matters. Given the prevalence of IoT devices, this fact may change in short order.