Object purpose
The reason this object matters: damage, access, transfer, preservation, transaction flow, identity claim, risk, or another case intent.
Digital evidence as objects
Digital Evidence Object
DEO is a way to make digital evidence answerable. When an investigation searches, it searches for objects: files, events, transactions, identities, sessions, requests, devices, preservation duties, and the relationships that make them meaningful.
The object lens
Every candidate trace becomes a 5W object
DEO does not ask the examiner to trust a raw data dump. It asks which objects answer the current investigative hypothesis and which attributes explain why that object belongs in the review set.
Object time
The broad and narrow time windows that let the investigator compare event time, system time, transaction time, and preservation time.
Object source
The location or origin of the object: path, wallet, mailbox, host, provider, process, public source, network segment, or legal recipient.
Object action
The event or state expressed by the object: created, modified, sent, received, preserved, correlated, transferred, observed, or requested.
Object actor
The person, account, device, process, address, service provider, or organization linked to the object by evidence or hypothesis.
Updated view
DEO is a decision layer for evidence work
Forensic acquisition, preservation, hashing, and reporting remain essential. DEO sits above them as an interpretive layer: it turns high-volume exports and open-source traces into smaller object sets that can be explained, challenged, and reviewed.
The same lens can hold local file-system traces, cryptocurrency transactions, preservation orders, production orders, GenAI-assisted leads, and cyber-risk records because each one can be expressed as an object with attributes and relationships.
Search target
Object
Core context
5W
Outcome
Review set
01
Preserve
Start from trusted acquisition, export, open-source collection, or legal request material.
02
Describe
Represent candidate material as objects with attributes, context, and source provenance.
03
Filter
Use 5W and habit cues to reduce volume without hiding the logic used to make the reduction.
04
Validate
Return selected objects to the original evidence environment for verification and reporting.