Validation of forensic tools and methods: A primer for the digital forensics examiner

Real-world laboratory use controlled internal tests utilizing scientific principles, and peer review should be leveraged in a proper validation test plan of digital and multimedia forensic tools and methods. As the field of digital and multimedia forensics continues to grow and evolve as a science, the importance of proper scientific validation of tools and methods, in addition to the fundamental understanding of its purpose and required elements, will be more critical than ever. As such, this primer article discusses the basic scientific foundations of forensic tool and method validations, in addition to the legal baselines for validations and how they are interpreted in the court of law. Lastly, the recommended steps of a forensically-sound validation methodology are discussed.