Overview
Within law enforcement agencies, the evidence is ought to be handled precariously by the custodians. Improper handling may lead to a formal interrogation followed by a judicial ruling that renders evidence inadmissible within the court.
VIDIZMO's Digital Evidence Management (DEM) System allows you to record the lifecycle of Evidence through establishing and maintaining the Chain of Custody for each evidence file, which is a set of security-oriented chronological records that provide documented proof of the sequence of activities performed on any digital evidence.
This helps in extraction of crucial information such as re-assignment of evidence to a previous officer or transfer of access to the defense attorney for limited viewing rights into a consolidated Chain of Custody report.
Prerequisites
You need to have Moderator+ role for accessing this feature.
Steps
I. From your Evidence Library:
1. Click on the overflow menu of the evidence of which you want to view the Chain of Custody.
2. Select Chain of Custody. It will take you to the detailed Chain of Custody view of the selected evidence.
II. In the Chain of Custody screen:
1. You will be able to filter to view all actions performed on that evidence with User, IP Address, Date and Time, Event, and complete details.
User: This field displays the name(s) of the user(s) with their email address who have committed changes in the Evidence.
IP Address: This field shows the IP address of the system from where the changes have been committed in the Evidence.
Date and Time: This column shows the timestamp at which the changes/updates have been done in the Evidence.
Event: This field shows the type of change/update that has been committed against the Evidence.
Changes: This field briefly defines the changes that have been committed by a user at the specific timestamp in the selected Evidence.
2. Click "Apply" to apply these filters on the reports.
III. The Evidence Chain of Custody can be sorted by Date & Time by clicking on the small arrow icon.
Downloading Evidence Chain of Custody
I. The Evidence Chain of Custody can also be downloaded in PDF/CSV format.
1. Click on the Download button, available on the top-right corner of The Chain of Custody Screen, to download the complete Chain of Custody of the selected Evidence. Here you can toggle between PDF/CSV format to be downloaded.
Note: In order to download the complete Chain of Custody report of an Evidence, select All from the drop-down of Number of Records per page.
Toggle Between Compact and Detailed View of Chain of Custody
By default, VIDIZMO DEM provides the Detailed View of Chain of Custody, as seen in the above pictures. This view segregates changes against each event. While the Compact View displays each change separately against an event as shown in the picture below. You can toggle between different views by clicking on the Compact View button available at the left-hand side of the Download Button.
Advanced Log Filtration in Chain of Custody
If you are viewing the evidence, having a long Chain of Custody, and you want to get results specific to a Name, IP Address, Timestamp and/or Event then you can use Chain of Custody Filters.
I. To filter records in Chain of Custody of an Evidence.
1. Click on the Filter (funnel) icon, available under the Evidence name.
2. A new screen will be opened, enter appropriate field value(s) in the given list of fields.
3. Click on the Apply button to fetch the results based on the specified criteria.
Note: Here, you have the option to download a tailored Chain of Custody report on the basis of Events. IP Address, User or Date Range after using our advanced filters.