On-Scene Digital Forensics: Winning Investigations Before The Lab

Stuart Hutchinson, VP of Sales at ADF Solutions, joins the Forensic Focus Podcast to talk about on-scene digital forensics and empowering first responders during the golden hour. Stuart shares his journey from 23 years with the Met Police — including a chance encounter in a New Scotland Yard lift that led him into Mac forensics and the vendor space at BlackBag, Cellebrite, Oxygen, and now ADF. With 99.9% of investigations involving a digital element, he argues that mishandling digital evidence at the scene is as damaging as trampling through traditional forensic evidence.

The conversation covers ADF's preview mode and search profile methodology, which gives first responders advanced logical acquisitions in minutes rather than 45+ minutes for a full extraction. Stuart explains how one UK force cut lab submissions by over 40% using an intelligence-led CAID hash triage strategy, and the team discuss locked-down search profiles built at DFU level, managing collateral intrusion, building trust with victims and witnesses, and ADF's screen capture and OCR for Chromebooks, PlayStations, Xboxes, and anything with HDMI out.

#ADFSolutions #OnSceneTriage #MobileForensics #CAID #CSAM #FirstResponders #DigitalForensics #DFIR

00:00 Introducing Stuart Hutchinson and ADF Solutions

02:13 From Met to Mac Forensics

07:26 Why On Scene Triage

08:01 Golden Hour Decisions

13:24 What to Triage First

16:26 ADF Field Kit Overview

18:04 Preview Mode Workflow

22:34 Search Profiles and Staging

26:38 Investigator Over Automation

28:11 Impact and CSAM Hashing

29:34 CAID Hash Triage Strategy