Why “Zero-Trust” is Becoming Important in Legal and Corporate Investigations
For decades, investigators, lawyers and courts operated on a relatively simple assumption: if digital evidence existed, it was probably authentic unless someone could prove otherwise. That assumption is now under increasing pressure. Security concerns have not gone away but increasingly I hear a different question – “how can we prove that this document or evidence has remained trustworthy throughout its lifecycle?”
The rapid advancement of generative AI and synthetic media tools is changing how organisations think about evidence, trust and authenticity.
The result is not simply a new fraud risk. It is a fundamental shift in how evidence is perceived. Across legal, compliance and investigative communities, the focus is shifting from content to provenance.
For lawyers and corporate investigators, addressing this shift will require not only new technology, but also new processes and cultural changes.
The New Threat Landscape
Modern AI tools make creating fake documents, videos, images and recordings remarkably straightforward. And if something is easy to do, someone will eventually do it.
Commercially available software can now generate cloned voices, synthetic video, manipulated documents, forged screenshots, altered metadata and entirely fabricated communications. For a rogue employee, dishonest supplier or an aggrieved customer, the combination of motive and means creates obvious temptation.
An example tool is Xanthorox AI, a platform that combines multiple AI-enabled forgery capabilities in a single environment. Most people will never encounter Xanthorox directly, but its significance lies in what it represents: the industrialisation of forgery.
The implications for investigations are profound. A recorded interview is no longer necessarily reliable by default; a document cannot be assumed genuine simply because it looks authentic. Even metadata, long regarded as a dependable forensic indicator, can increasingly be manipulated or fabricated.
The deeper problem is not fake evidence itself. It is the erosion of confidence in genuine evidence. This creates what cyber and intelligence professionals describe as the “liar’s dividend”: genuine evidence can be dismissed as fake simply because the technology to fabricate similar material exists. This risk is increasingly recognised outside the legal profession. News organisations, technology companies and governments are now investing heavily in content provenance and authenticity frameworks. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), describes provenance information as a means of establishing “the origin, history and authenticity of digital content”1. The implication is clear in a world where convincing forgery is accessible, trust can no longer be assumed; it must be demonstrated.
The Rise of Zero Trust Thinking
Organisations are responding with “zero trust” operating models. Originally developed in cybersecurity, zero trust assumes that no user, device or communication can be trusted without verification. Increasingly, the same principle is being applied to evidence.
Historically, organisations relied on institutional trust, professional reputation and procedural assumptions. A lawyer’s assurance that evidence had been handled correctly was often sufficient.
As synthetic evidence becomes more sophisticated, organisations are becoming less willing to rely solely on professional assurances. Instead, they increasingly expect demonstrable provenance, verifiable audit trails and independently verifiable records of evidential continuity. An illustration of this trend is Canon’s recent announcement of a C2PA-compliant imaging system for professional newsrooms2.
In effect, the expectation is shifting from “trust the process” to “prove the process”.
Why This Matters and What Needs to be Done
As the authenticity of digital material becomes less certain, the prospect grows that opponents will demand evidence of how evidence was obtained, who accessed it, whether it was altered, how it was preserved and whether its chain of custody can be independently verified.
In response, lawyers and investigators must focus not only on technologies and tools, but also on cultural and process.
Rethinking the Tools We Use
There is a significant mind-set change that lawyers and investigators will need to adopt and potentially persuade their IT departments to support. Most video conferencing and collaboration platforms were designed for communication, not evidence preservation. They typically offer limited support for provenance, forensic auditability, identity assurance, tamper detection or long-term evidential continuity.
In effect, many of today’s tools and processes remain fundamentally trust-based rather than trust-preserving.
The mind-set change is this: moving forward, any system or process lawyers and investigators are using to create evidence, particularly recordings and videos, must be trust-preserving.
The implication may be profound; for certain types of work lawyers and investigators will have to abandon “one size fits all” corporate tools and adopt systems designed for evidential use.
When Editing Breaks the Chain
Recordings now sit at the centre of many investigations, from witness interviews and whistleblower disclosures to employee meetings and remote evidence gathering. While an original recording may be securely captured, timestamped and linked to verified participants, it is rarely the final evidential product.
Investigators often need to redact sensitive information, remove privileged content, prepare excerpts, generate transcripts or create translated and edited versions for regulators and courts.
This is often where evidential continuity weakens.
Once a recording is exported into conventional editing software and re-saved, demonstrating the relationship between the original artefact and the edited version can become difficult. Even legitimate edits can be difficult to explain and verify.
In an era shaped by deepfakes and synthetic media, the challenge is preserving trust throughout the evidence lifecycle.
Investigators increasingly need tools that maintain chain of custody across edits rather than breaking it. Emerging technologies are beginning to address this by cryptographically linking edited artefacts to their source material through auditable version histories. Combined with cryptographic timestamping and blockchain verification, these approaches allow investigators to demonstrate not only that an original recording existed, but that every subsequent edit can be traced and independently validated.
The Process Challenge
Experienced investigators may argue that none of this is new. Chain of custody, continuity of evidence and provenance have always mattered.
The challenge is that the point at which those principles must be applied is moving upstream.
Traditionally, investigators focused on preserving the integrity of evidence once it entered the investigative process. Increasingly, however, questions arise before that process even begins. Is the witness genuine? Is the recording authentic? Was the document created by the purported author? Has AI played a role in generating or altering the material?
The objective remains unchanged: preserving trust. What changes is when that trust must first be established.
The Cultural Challenge
The most difficult change may ultimately be cultural. For years, digital evidence benefited from an implicit presumption of authenticity. As we have seen, that presumption is weakening.
A different mindset is emerging. Organisations increasingly expect important digital evidence to be independently verifiable.
This requires a shift in thinking. Teams that create evidence must consider how it may be scrutinised years later by regulators, courts or counterparties. Provenance can no longer be regarded as a specialist concern. It is becoming a core element of governance.
A Final Challenge: Why Now?
Most of us have not yet faced a serious challenge to the authenticity of our evidence, so it is tempting to view this as a future problem. I think that would be a mistake. Provenance cannot be added retrospectively. Every witness interview, recording and document produced now is being created in a world where authenticity is still often assumed. It may ultimately be tested in a world where authenticity is routinely questioned. Organisations that wait until those challenges arrive may discover that it is too late to reconstruct the provenance they failed to preserve.
Three questions matter:
- Can we demonstrate the provenance of our most important digital evidence?
- Can we prove the relationship between an original recording and any edited or redacted version?
- How would we respond if a regulator, court or opposing party challenged the authenticity of a key recording?
Those that act early will not merely be better protected against forgery. They will be better equipped to defend the integrity of their investigations, withstand authenticity challenges and maintain credibility when it matters most.
In the age of AI-generated deception, trust itself is becoming infrastructure.
David Jackson, Issured
David Jackson has been working in the field of digital evidence for the past 15 years, supporting lawyers, courts and software providers in the UK, Canada and the USA. He works extensively with AI, in particular supporting lawyers to develop solutions and manage the risks of Generative AI.
About Mea Digital Evidence Integrity
The Mea Digital Evidence Integrity suite of products has been developed by UK based consultancy, Issured Ltd. Benefitting from years of experience working in defence and security, Issured recognised the growing threat from digital disinformation and developed the Mea Digital Evidence Integrity Suite of products to ensure digital media can be trusted.
MeaConnexus is a secure investigative interview platform designed to protect the evidential integrity of the interview content. With features designed to support and improve effective investigations, MeaConnexus can be used anytime, anywhere and on any device, with no need to download any software.
MeaFuse has been designed to protect the authenticity and integrity of any digital media from the point of capture or creation anywhere in the world. Available on iOS, Android, Windows and MacOS MeaFuse digitally transforms the traditional chain of custody to ensure information is evidential.
Disclaimer and Copyright
The information in this article has been created using multiple sources of information. This includes our own knowledge and expertise, external reports, news articles and websites.
We have not independently verified the sources in this article, and Issured Limited assume no responsibility for the accuracy of the sources.
This article is created for information and insight, not intended to be used or cited for advice.
All material produced in the article is copyrighted by Issured Limited.
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