RATING BREAKDOWN
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QUICK READ
- Strengths: Saves time while ensuring that no critical data is lost; extremely intuitive interface.
- Weaknesses: Limiting the steganography searching to JPEGs does limit some of TAPS practical applications.
- Verdict: A perfect program for those that have a high volume of computer forensic searching. This one is Recommended.
WetStone's Trait Analytic Profiling Search (TAPS) provides investigators with a simple but important commodity: time. As the size of memory storage devices increases, it takes more time to adequately search them. That is why, sponsored by the National Institute of Justice, WetStone began the development of this software.
TAPS performs a couple different functions and it does them well. First, it uses a new hashing method, developed for TAPS, that separates the "known good" files from the "known bad" files - hashing only those that it deems necessary. Once this quick hash has been performed, it will pass the files it still sees as a threat to more traditional hashing methods, such as SHA-512, for more in-depth coverage.
The other major function that this program serves is the uncovering of steganography within JPEG files. While this is a fairly limited application, it does perform this job very well. The program supports direct drive scanning, drive image mounting and archive inspection.
The installation was fairly straightforward. We downloaded it off the internet and started it up in minutes. The GUI was designed so it feels extremely intuitive to use.
As TAPS is a program designed for performance and the speeding up of otherwise lengthy investigations, the performance of this program is excellent.
The documentation is simple to understand and comes as a PDF file when downloading the actual program.
The first year of 24/7 email support is included with the purchase of the software, and users can pay $200 after the first year to continue such support.
WetStone's TAPS is available for $499 to private industry.
