Chain of custody

Chain of custody is the documented sequence of hands a piece of evidence has passed through, from collection to court.

A break in the chain is an opening for the other side. If nobody can say who held a document between collection and disclosure, its integrity is arguable.

Software cannot supply a chain of custody on its own, but it can record the part that happens inside it: when a document arrived, by which route, who has opened it, and whether its content has changed since.

Related: Provenance, Checksum, Audit log

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