Digital forensics in the age of AI risk

On Innovation Matters, a podcast by Dirk Joachim Primus from AGSM at UNSW Business School, Matt O’Kane explored the increasingly high-stakes world of digital forensics. O’Kane described the field as caught between technological innovation and rising criminal complexity.

“From an investigator’s point of view, it’s more useful if the person that I’m investigating has a wider and bigger digital footprint,” said O’Kane. “As a company, or even an individual, you should establish how something we do or say may be taken out of context. How can something that we publish be used against us to potentially gain access to one of our systems?”

According to O’Kane, while public sharing of information has become normalised, forensic scrutiny is now a pressing concern, particularly for organisations.

“We’re seeing people being very forensically aware,” he said. “And we’re also seeing manufacturers locking down devices.”

O’Kane expressed concern about artificial intelligence’s role in undermining trust in digital communication. “I think that going forward we’re going to see an increase in disputes about the authenticity of things.”

A significant part of his work revolves around authenticating communications. “And this is in the pre-AI era,” O’Kane added.

One method being introduced to counter rising threats is identity verification and stronger security architecture. “We’re seeing this push towards adding in extra information to enrich the login of a person,” he said. “Like a second factor authentication, like a phone number, a passport.”

O’Kane said the key issue is balance. “We need to make sure that people are held accountable for their crimes online,” he said.

He also noted the importance of cross-border considerations. “We must be careful, especially with cross-border activities. What’s legal in one country is not legal in another.”