For decades, the forensic “gold standard” was straightforward: isolate the computer, pull the plug, and image the drive. In that era, what you saw on the screen was physically present on the magnetic platters, waiting to be extracted bit by bit. Today, that assumption is not just outdated; it is plain wrong. The rapid adoption of cloud storage services, partial on-demand synchronization, and full-disk encryption has fundamentally broken the traditional dead-box workflow, turning the simple act of powering down a suspect’s computer into a potential destroyer of evidence.

Elcomsoft Phone Breaker is not just about Apple iCloud data. It can also download the data from other cloud services including Microsoft accounts. In this new version, we have added support for even more types of data, including Windows 10 Timeline, Account Activity (logins to the account), OneDrive files, recent OneDrive files history, and files from Microsoft Personal Vault. Learn about these data types and how they can help advance your investigation.

There are three major mobile operating systems, and three major cloud services. Most Android users are deep into the Google’s ecosystem. iCloud is an essential part of iOS, while cloud services provided by Microsoft under the OneDrive umbrella are used not only by the few Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile customers but by users of other mobile and desktop platforms.

Beginning with Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1, Microsoft started unifying its mobile and desktop operating systems. No wonder the two versions of Microsoft’s latest OS, Windows 10, share the same approach to two-factor authentication.