The Southwest Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force needed to securely share evidence, connect field investigators, and accelerate mobile forensic investigations.
The Southwest Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force investigates internet crimes against children across 22 counties, or roughly a quarter of the state. Operating across a large geographic region, with investigators frequently deployed in the field, the task force required a secure and operationally efficient way to transfer sensitive forensic data between investigators, mobile response teams, and centralized forensic labs. Investigators routinely worked from active field environments, often handling highly sensitive evidence during criminal investigations, search warrants, and school response cases, where secure and reliable access to investigative data was critical.
That created two operational challenges: First, investigators needed a secure way to access and share sensitive evidence files, including photos and videos tied to active criminal investigations, without exposing that data to interception or third-party systems. Additionally, the rapid evolution of AI-driven cyber attacks and the emerging threat of quantum computing have drastically escalated these data transfer risks. While current cryptographic standards cannot fully prevent the “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” (HNDL) or “Trust Now, Forge Later” (TNFL) attacks posed by future quantum decryption, reducing the immediate visibility and accessibility of these data streams remains a critical priority.
Second, the digital forensics teams needed a faster way to move extracted device data from the field back to their forensic labs.
“ZeroTier saves us a ton of time. Even if we do extractions on scene, we can be transferring those files securely through ZeroTier while we travel. It saves a lot of time on the forensic side of things, and our investigators use it daily.”
By modernizing their secure connectivity architecture, the Southwest Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force improved the speed and efficiency of digital forensic operations while maintaining strong protections around sensitive investigative evidence. Unlike traditional hub-and-spoke VPNs that hairpin traffic through a central choke point, ZeroTier operates as a peer-to-peer overlay, combining the encrypted tunneling of a VPN with the dynamic routing intelligence of an SD-WAN. This allows for direct, high-speed connections between field devices and central servers. Investigators were able to move critical forensic data more quickly, collaborate securely across jurisdictions, and maintain operational continuity during active investigations and field deployments.
To protect this sensitive data in transit, ZeroTier secures these direct connections using defense-grade encryption. The underlying ZT1 protocol relies on a robust secure handshake to establish cryptographic trust between endpoints before any data flows. Additionally, the platform is built with FIPS-capable encryption capabilities to support agencies with strict federal compliance requirements.
A major beneficial outcome of this implementation was the collapsing of the IP stack. By abstracting the network layer, ZeroTier effectively “darkens” the network, hiding connected forensic laptops and mobile devices from the public internet. This drastically reduces the task force’s overall threat surface, ensuring that even advanced, AI-driven scanning tools can’t easily discover or target their network.
The deployment helped the task force streamline evidence handling workflows while supporting the secure, distributed nature of modern cyber crime investigations.
Want to learn how the Southwest Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force uses ZeroTier to securely access critical forensic systems from the field? Download the full case study to get the details.
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