Technology for detecting sexually explicit image content has been added to the "app store" for forensic software platform EnCase from Guidance Software.

Guidance Software recently launched EnCase App Central, a new online community and marketplace for digital investigators that provides access to apps, best practices, and community support. EnCase App Central includes both free and paid apps built using the EnScript programming language. 

The Image Analyzer app will allow examiners to analyse large volumes of images, to quickly and accurately identify pornographic content. This enables review of image data based on a risk profile and significantly reduces the time to discovering critical evidence and building a meaningful case. EnCase App Central offers both a free trial version and paid Image Analyzer modules.

Also available in the new App Central marketplace will be reporting templates, evidence processor templates and tools that help integrate EnCase with third-party applications.

EnCase eDiscovery 5.2 has also been launched, integrating a complete e-discovery workflow functionality — from legal hold and preservation to SaaS-based review and production.

The legal hold capabilities included in EnCase eDiscovery now streamline the management of custodians by allowing for designation of individuals within a group as "inactive" or "active." This feature enables reviewers to save time by selecting a logical workgroup of custodians, with the flexibility to make exceptions for those not involved with the current matter via the inactive status.

EnCase eDiscovery also now supports a new level of security protection with AES-256 encryption for collected data, providing the industry's highest level of encryption for sensitive data residing in the cloud or in other areas outside of the corporate network. Users can set encryption options when the job is created and also lockdown access to their global repository with secure tracking and administration of keys and passwords.

File transfer speed to the SaaS-based EnCase eDiscovery Review platform is also improved in Version 5.2, allowing review teams to begin their work more quickly and efficiently. The improvements are two-fold with the addition of intelligent data transfer and packet compression. Now only data that is new to the repository is sent, reducing the total volume of documents transferred. Packet compression has also been added, further reducing data volume and transfer time. In-house counsel also has access to real-time data integrity reports that track network transmission status to provide transparency into the data-transfer process.