A milestone for Hansken today in Maastricht: the digital forensics platform won first prize in the Digital Transformation category at the European Public Sector Awards (EPSA). A total of 151 innovative projects competed, including 54 in the digital transformation category.
"By fostering strong collaboration among international criminal justice chain parties in the field of digital forensics, the Hansken team has built a unique and trusted community of Hansken users. It is wonderful to see that this international collaboration is enabling Hansken to continue to grow and innovate, helping an increasing number of organizations deal with digital forensic evidence," said the EPSA jury.
The Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) began developing a forensic search engine in 2012 to help investigative agencies quickly and efficiently examine large amounts of digital traces. Confiscated data carriers, such as computers and cell phones, contain a lot of information and digital evidence. Especially in fraud, murder, and child abuse cases, investigators have to wade through gigantic mountains of data. With Hansken, quick and very specific searches can be made
The use of digital data is increasing every day. Investigative agencies notice this in their cases, where they encounter more digital evidence every day. With Hansken, investigators and digital experts can handle these large amounts and thus cooperate efficiently in their investigations. Hansken indexes all digital traces automatically. Users can then search by words, names and numbers, for example, or by trace properties such as emails, instant messages, photos and locations.
Hansken has now amply proven itself and has already been instrumental in many hundreds of cases. Including cases involving messages from the EncroChat cryptocommunication service. The platform is used by almost all law enforcement agencies in the Netherlands and is now (further) developed and used by a global community of law enforcement partners. Together they continue to work on innovations, such as the use of AI in the platform. This makes it possible, for example, to search for objects in photos. In this way, the investigation services of different countries help each other with knowledge and innovation that is already available.
