Advanced Locksmith: Forensic Locksmithing

Advanced Locksmith: Forensic Locksmithing

Interested in advancing in your profession? Check out ideas for advancing your locksmith career.

Forensic locksmithing is a fairly unpopular field of investigative work that gives a much desired service to law enforcement, private companies and government agencies. A forensic locksmith, also known as an investigative locksmith, examines lock and keying systems for evidence of compromise, including methods to determine mode of entry, the tools used, the time and skill needed, and any evidence that identifies victims, suspects, or other important information. Forensic locksmiths do not solve cases, rather they help gather information and provide suggestions to investigators that may allow them to solve a case. In addition to criminal investigations, an advanced locksmith that has a formal forensics training also perform routine security maintenance for government and private companies to distinguish any attempts to jeopardize a lock or key system. Penetration testing and security research can also be performed by many forensic locksmiths.

What does it take to be an advanced locksmith?

Basically, an extensive understanding of how locks, keying systems, vaults and safes operate and relate with one another are needed. The finer details of common locks, their features, installation procedures, and security vulnerabilities are all valuable.

Understanding compromise techniques is very important since it can drastically reduce the scope to a handful of techniques, and, more typically, a handful of potential suspects. Knowing what can and cannot be used to open a specific lock is often underestimated. A forensic locksmith also draws skills from a lot of other disciplines, which includes chain of custody, photography, evidence handling, macro photography, microscopy, and toolmark identification.

Identifying the method of entry is one of the primary goals of a forensic investigation, either how the entry was attempted or accomplished. Basically, a forensic locksmith identifies three methods of entry: destructive, covert, and surreptitious. Each method is mainly differentiated by the type of evidence left behind and the ease of identifying different incursions.

Destructive entry damages or destroys a lock, safe, window, wall or door. Destructive techniques are certainly the most common method of attack due to speed, easiness, and low cost of tools. Most destructive entries leave the lock or working keys non-functional and are easily identified by anyone, not just by a locksmith. Carshalton have training venues that offer advanced locksmith courses on forensics.

Covert entry usually does not harm the operation of the lock or working keys. Common covert techniques, which leave evidence not easily identified by users, include lock picking, pick guns, vibration picks, key bumping, impressioning, decoding, and bypass. Visual inspection is the primary mode of identifying covert entry techniques used by a forensic locksmith. Earls Court forensic locksmiths also identify detailed tool marks and trace evidence with photography and microscopy.

Surreptitious entry produces little to no evidence at all. Fortunately, there are only a few techniques considered as surreptitious, and most that do are either expensive or time-consuming. Visual decoding, such as taking a photocopy of a key or sight-reading the bitting cuts on a key, is an effortless yet powerful surreptitious technique.