Computer forensics technologies for personally identifiable information detection and audits

Where Do Existing PII Tools Look for Sensitive Data? PII tools typically search through the directory tree, looking at the content of allocated files, e-mail and the like for keywords or strings that indicate the file needs further investigation. For example, the tools might search for files that contain strings of 16 digits that could represent a credit card number. The strength of current PII tools is to quickly find possible PII in locations in which data are visible to the operating system. However, they do not provide support for searching data outside of these traditional areas. For example, if a file containing the same string of 16 digits had been deleted, the current PII tools would not find the file even though it may be recoverable. Deleted files are considered unallocated and are not available to view by PII tools.