Industry Briefing
A weekly, source-verified briefing on chain of custody, digital forensics, and eDiscovery — grounded only in court decisions, government and law-enforcement guidance, standards bodies, and open-access scholarship. Every claim is checked against its source before we publish.
A hash is a digital fingerprint. Paired with a hash chain, it turns a custody log into a record that reveals any alteration. Here is how it works, in plain terms.
Read the full briefing →Evidence is challenged on the gaps, not the substance. These practices — drawn from published forensic guidance — keep a chain of custody defensible from the scene to the courtroom.
A chain-of-custody form is only as good as the details on it. Here is a field-by-field walkthrough for both physical and digital evidence, with the mistakes that most often create a break in the chain.
Two frameworks define modern digital-evidence handling: ISO/IEC 27037 for identification, collection, acquisition, and preservation, and NIST SP 800-86 for the forensic process. Here is how they fit together.
Under FRE 901, the proponent of evidence must show it is what they claim it is. Chain of custody is how you meet that burden — and FRE 902 now lets qualified electronic records authenticate themselves.
Chain of custody is the documented, unbroken trail that shows where evidence has been, who handled it, and that it was not altered. Here is how it works and why courts require it.