DIGITAL FORENSICS MARKET ANALYSIS

Digital forensics plays a vital role in enterprise applications in order to address numerous problems such as facilitating IT security and incident response to empower the human resource investigations and forensic analysis of digital devices. Digital forensics is a multifaceted process that helps business organizations to streamline and simplify their business tasks by detecting issues and increase litigation, investigations, and regulatory readiness. The digital forensics include number of steps and has impact on various stages of an investigation including Data Collection, Hosting, Review, Data Processing, Production, e-mail analytics, and Social networking & timeline analysis.

The global digital forensics market is expected to witness significant growth during the forecast period (2020–2027) due to the growing consumer goods & retail industries. Frauds could be a challenge for the consumer goods industry, with the potential to impact finances, brand value, and customer trust. Enterprises dealing with consumer goods tend to have various third-party touch points, which include transporters, vendors/suppliers, third party manufacturers or subcontractors, stockiest, packers, and other third party service providers. These third-party touch-points of consumer goods industry are responsible for the increasing risk of collusive frauds that are difficult to identify. According to CMI’s analysis, most of the survey respondents belonging to the consumer goods industry have experienced bribery, diversion of goods, and corruption over the past few years. To minimize these security issues, enterprises in consumer goods industry are implementing digital forensic tools to streamline their business processes. Furthermore, the e-commerce is emerging as a new distribution channel for the consumer goods industry. The supply chain have become a source of fraud such as counterfeiting. For instance, unauthorized and illegal online third-party sales channel may sell branded products at heavy discounted prices. Such branded products are usually obtained through leaks in the supply chain.

Lack of awareness among the small and medium enterprises is a major factor hindering growth of the digital forensics market. Since, these forensics tools are expensive and complex, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are reluctant to adopt, owing to budget constraints. Moreover, SMEs also lack skilled labor, which is another major factor hindering growth of the market. According to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Analysis, enterprises in the U.S. have widely embraced digital forensics technology; however, European enterprises especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have yet to tap the potential of this technology.

Global Digital Forensics Market - Impact of Coronavirus (Covid-19) Pandemic

Globally, most of the countries are affected by COVID-19 and most of the countries have announced lockdown. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, the need for digital forensics has increased as businesses have suddenly shifted towards digital infrastructure with remote solutions. Instances of cyber-attacks targeted at valuable enterprise information have been increasing across sectors, including healthcare, manufacturing, banking, logistics, administration, and government organizations.

Additionally, due to the lockdown measures, the number of digital transactions have increased drastically, with governments advising people to make transactions using contactless payment methods to prevent the spread of COVID-19. But this trend has led to unethical hacking and other cybercrimes over the internet. Therefore, the need for digital forensics has increased due to COVID-19 pandemic, which will provide growth opportunities for the market players in coming years.

North America held dominant position in the global digital forensics market in 2019

Statistics:

North America held dominant position in the global digital forensics market in 2019, accounting for 42% share in terms of value, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific.

Figure 1: Global Digital Forensics Market Share (%), By Region, 2019

North America is expected to account for the largest market share during the forecast period, owing to the high presence of key players such as AccessData Group, Inc., Guidance Software, Inc./OpenText Corp., Oxygen Forensics, Paraben Corporation, and Binary Intelligence, LLC. For instance, in November 2020, OpenText Corp, the U.S. based software development company, announced that OpenText EnCase Forensic and OpenText EnCase Endpoint Investigator will be available on the cloud with Microsoft  Azure. With OpenText Encase solutions in the cloud, law enforcement and corporate investigators can more easily collaborate, enhance evidence processing, investigate in cloud environments, and adjust more quickly to the needs of a remote workforce.

Asia Pacific is expected to exhibit significant growth during the forecast period, owing to the increasing use of cloud environment for data storage. Organizations operating in sectors such as banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), retail, and government are shifting their workload to cloud for cost-savings, agility, and flexibility, which has increased organisations' susceptibility to cyber-attacks. Therefore, cloud forensics have gained much attention from forensics experts in Asia Pacific.

Computer forensics segment is expected to drive the market growth during the forecast period

Among forensic type, the computer forensics segment is expected to hold dominant position in the global digital forensics market during the forecast period. Increasing demand for computers for personal and professional use is driving demand for computer forensics. For instance, according to Coherent Market Insights’ analysis, computer forensics segment accounted for around 1.3 billion across the globe in 2019.

Figure 2: Global Digital Forensics Market Value (US$ Mn) Analysis and Forecast, 2017 - 2027

The global digital forensics market was valued at US$ 4,501.0 Mn in 2019 and is expected to reach US$ 9,453.0 Mn by 2027 at a CAGR of 10.8% between 2020 and 2027.

Major players operating in the global digital forensics market include AccessData Group, Inc., Guidance Software, Inc./OpenText Corp., Oxygen Forensics, Paraben Corporation, Cellmark Forensic Services, Binary Intelligence, LLC, FireEye, Nuix Pty Ltd., IBM Corporation, LogRhythm, Inc., Magnet Forensics Inc., and Cisco Systems, Inc.