You have decided to buy Belkasoft X—great decision! We are sure this tool will take an important place in your investigative toolset. Now, you must choose among four different editions of the product to make the best use of your budget by purchasing the most suitable and affordable edition for your DFIR team.
In this article, we will advise you on how to make the most informed decision.
Available Editions
The available editions include: X Mobile and X Computer, X Forensic, and X Corporate. X Mobile and X Computers are the two 'starter' editions and share the same most affordable price. The X Forensic edition is the next tier, and the X Corporate edition is the most expensive, but it also offers the most features.
The names of these configurations speak for themselves:
- X Mobile supports mobile forensics only. This includes acquisition, analysis and reporting
- Likewise, X Computer supports computer forensics only
- X Forensic edition is designed for law enforcement. It combines both mobile and computer forensics, and adds support for cloud forensics, WDE (whole disk encryption), and our checkm8-based acquisition
- X Corporate supports everything from X Forensic as well as an Incident Investigations module and YARA and Sigma rules support
When to Select X Mobile Edition
X Mobile is an excellent edition to start working with mobiles only. It is almost
twice less expensive than X Forensic edition and the only missing mobile forensics
feature compared to X Forensic is checkm8-based iOS acquisition and of course the
ability to acquire an iCloud backup. If you are not working with iOS devices, or
are typically only analyzing iTunes backups or working with iPhones newer than the
X model or iOS 16, then X Mobile is the right choice for you.
It is important to emphasize that it is risk-free for you to buy a starter edition. Should you discover that you need to upgrade to the more powerful edition, this upgrade will be offered at the difference in price.
When to Select X Computer Edition
X Computer helps those who work with computers only. With the same price as X Mobile, it is also almost twice less expensive than X Forensic. If you do not need mobile device support, and you do not need to decrypt disks or images encrypted with technologies like Bitlocker, PGP, TrueCrypt, this edition will do a great job for you at an affordable price.
As with X Mobile, it is important to emphasize that it is again, risk-free for you to buy a starter edition. Should you discover that you need to upgrade to the more powerful edition, this upgrade will be offered at the difference in price.
When to Select X Forensic Edition
This is our best selling edition, so by default we think every customer should consider this edition. It combines both a powerful feature set and a price that is much more affordable than the competition.
This edition is a great addition for users of both mobile and computer versions. For mobile forensicators, it adds the checkm8 support. For computers ones, it adds decryption of WDE-enabled images, including about 10 different encryption technologies, like Bitlocker, VeraCrypt, APFS, FileVault and others. Cloud acquisitions including iCloud, to include iCloud backups, Google Cloud and various application clouds such as WhatsApp and Instagram are all supported in this edition.
When to Select X Corporate Edition
The X Corporate edition is the most powerful edition of Belkasoft X that we currently offer. It is aimed at corporate incident responders and those forensic investigators which may benefit from features related to incident investigations. The X Corporate edition includes all the features of X Forensic and adds the Incident Investigations module, capable of quickly showing an examiner traces of leftover malware, viruses and other malicious code. Another useful incident response function available only in the X Corporate edition is YARA and Sigma rules support.
Even as the highest priced edition of Belkasoft X, the corporate edition of Belkasoft X is still much less expensive than the starter editions of the competitor products, making it an excellent choice for digital forensic and incident response teams.
Additional Options
There are a number of additional options which you have to consider:
File Decryption Module
First, the File Decryption module is available at an additional charge. Based on our partner's product Passware Kit Forensic, this module allows Belkasoft X users to brute-force and decrypt more than 300 types of encrypted files such as PDF, Word, Quickbooks, archives etc. On this page you can find the list of supported encryption types. This is a no-brainer module because of its price. It comes equipped with a standalone Passware Kit Forensic at the price of the product, but also adds up an integration with Belkasoft X. With this module addition, the end user has the ability to utilize case-built dictionary files, user-built dictionary files, and even Passware Kit Forensic (PKF) configuration files to attempt the brute force of encrypted files, directly inside of the Belkasoft X user interface.
BelkaS21
A second available option is the BelkaS21 bundle. This bundle consists of Belkasoft X Forensic edition coupled with the powerful Semantics S21 tool, aimed to assist investigators working with CSAM and victim identification.
The price of this bundle is slightly higher than the X Forensic edition, but comes at a huge discount compared to the combined price of the two tools alone, which makes it an excellent and budget-friendly choice for specialists working with media files forensics.