Encase vs FTK vs X-Ways Review
Encase is
a forensic suite produced by Guidance Software (now part of OpenText)
that is popular with commercial providers. A standard license comes in
at around $3500. They have recently had a few controversies around intellectual property.
Forensic Toolkit (FTK)
has been around for as long as Encase and is particularly popular with
law enforcement. FTK is a forensic suite. The owner, AccessData, also
make the solid product FTK Imager available for free. They have recently
expanded to offer cloud forensic capabilities. FTK is priced similarly
to Encase, at around $3000.
X-Ways
is the third of the “big three” forensic suites. The user interface
suffers some feature creep, but in my experience it is considerably more
reliable, faster and cheaper than FTK or Encase. It costs around $1000.
