Digital chain of custody innovation management roadmap

In CBRNE incidents, the digital chain of custody (dCoC) management for collected samples lacks standardisation, resulting in inconsistent practices among stakeholders within and across EU member states. To ensure consistency and admissibility of evidence in court, it is crucial to establish a standardised dCoC process across EU member states. A survey with end-users was conducted to document all steps included in the custody, control, transfer, and auditing of digital evidence items. Through these co-creation sessions, end-users contributed to identifying rules for authenticity, integrity, and relevant metadata considerations. The goal was to define a standard dCoC process that ensures the traceability and security of CBRNE evidence items throughout the entire process and, in more detail, to document all actions in the custodianship chain, thereby enhancing the custody owner's transparency and accountability. Standardising the data governance process for a unified approach towards operationalising a non-repudiation chain of custodianship is a security issue. The latter necessitates a global agreement on the digital custody metadata to ensure the integrity of the dCoC and the auditing of digital evidence items. Furthermore, the dCoC process should address metadata standardisation challenges and incorporate alert mechanisms to monitor the custodianship of digital CBRNE evidence items. This paper presents a case study developed within the STRATEGY H2020 funded project, with two Technical Specifications submitted to the CEN/TC 391. The proposed data governance workflow provides guidance on securely executing digital transfers and identifies the stakeholders involved as contributors to the evidentiary materials at each stage of the dCoC process. Furthermore, the paper examines the suggested method within the framework of innovation management dimensions, providing a structure to document notable advantages for each target audience and appropriate engagement strategies.