  Owing to a number of reasons, the deployment of encryption solutions are
beginning to be ubiquitous at both organizational and individual levels. The
most emphasized reason is the necessity to ensure confidentiality of privileged
information. Unfortunately, it is also popular as cyber-criminals' escape route
from the grasp of digital forensic investigations. The direct encryption of
data or indirect encryption of storage devices, more often than not, prevents
access to such information contained therein. This consequently leaves the
forensics investigation team, and subsequently the prosecution, little or no
evidence to work with, in sixty percent of such cases. However, it is
unthinkable to jeopardize the successes brought by encryption technology to
information security, in favour of digital forensics technology. This paper
examines what data encryption contributes to information security, and then
highlights its contributions to digital forensics of disk drives. The paper
also discusses the available ways and tools, in digital forensics, to get
around the problems constituted by encryption. A particular attention is paid
to the Truecrypt encryption solution to illustrate ideas being discussed. It
then compares encryption's contributions in both realms, to justify the need
for introduction of new technologies to forensically defeat data encryption as
the only solution, whilst maintaining the privacy goal of users.
