Wynyard Group, part of Christchurch-based Jade Soft-ware, has entered into an agreement with the police that Wynyard chief executive Craig Richardson says will result in a game-changing product becoming available for the billion-dollar global cyber crime, forensic imaging, validation and analysis market.
The EVE technology greatly improved the efficiency and effectiveness of those gathering data from devices seized by the police, ultimately resulting in less time taken to gather evidence against criminals.
In Europe, tens of thousands of devices were seized every year but backlogs in the analysis process meant an 18-month to two-year wait for the evidence, Mr Richardson said.
In New Zealand, because of EVE, there was no backlog and evidence was processed rapidly.
Wynyard bought EVE from the New Zealand Police and integrated it with Wynyard's criminal intelligence technology. No price was disclosed.
One of EVE's major achievements was it allowed forensic specialists to make a virtual image of the device, operating it like the suspect, but without destroying anything on the device.
Wynyard would overlay its technology on EVE, allowing law enforcement agencies wider access to track things like emails across multiple devices, he said.
If an email could be tracked across several devices, suspects might be linked to multiple cases.
"This allows the police to collect intelligence to better understand the criminal network. We can gather data from several sources and fuse it together."
Mr Richardson believed the Wynyard deal with the police was one of first public-private partnerships in New Zealand law enforcement.
Deputy commissioner operations Mike Bush said it made sense for the police to work with a company that had the expertise and resources to extend EVE both for the New Zealand Police and law enforcement agencies in other countries.
EVE was developed by the police e-crime team.
"It has garnered interest from police forces and governments around the world. By working with Wynyard Group, we have ensured that EVE will continue to be a world-leading crime-fighting tool."
Mr Richardson said negotiations with the police had been on a commercial basis, both parties seeing "commercial reality" in the process.
Wynyard would follow up the approaches already made to the police as well as using its own list of contacts to market the product around the world.
At a glance
Developed in 2007, New Zealand Police technology EVE (environment for virtualised evidence) allows enforcement officers to rapidly analyse seized electronic goods such as cellphones, PCs and other storage devices for evidence and intelligence. It does this by creating a virtual copy of the device and presenting the data to officers to view and search while still preserving all of the data in its original form.
