On Oct. 13, hosting a cyber-crime prevention gathering called the Digital Crimes Consortium at its Redmond, Wash., headquarters, Microsoft announced it was teaming with the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) to make the center the nation's first distributor of a Microsoft-developed program called Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE). The NW3C is a nonprofit organization that offers training and services for law enforcement to help state and local agencies battle "emerging economic and cyber-crime problems."

According to a Microsoft press release, one of the objectives of cyber-crime investigators is completing forensic analyses of crime scene computers to collect "live" data such as systems process active at the time and data regarding the network a computer may have been connected to. Such data is often lost when computers and powered down and removed from a crime scene.

COFEE is a USB device that automatically collects this "live" data at the scene.

"With COFEE, a front-line officer doesn't have to be a computer forensics expert or even have much computer experience to capture this important evidence," Tim Cranton, associate general counsel of Worldwide Internet Safety Enforcement Programs at Microsoft wrote in a blog today. "With less than 10 minutes of training and a pre-configured USB device, an officer can use COFEE to capture live computer data on the scene."

With high-tech white collar crime on the rise, "the COFEE distribution agreement will be of enormous benefit to U.S. law enforcement agencies dealing with technologically sophisticated cyber-criminals," Donald J. Brackman, director of NW3C, said at today's event.

Law enforcement agents may visit the Microsoft COFEE site to learn how to acquire COFEE.