Amazon Detective vs Exterro FTK Imager Pro: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Amazon Detective is a free digital forensics and incident response tool. Exterro FTK Imager Pro is a commercial digital forensics and incident response tool by Exterro. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best digital forensics and incident response fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, company size fit, deployment model, here is our conclusion:
AWS security teams investigating incidents across multi-account environments will get the most from Amazon Detective because it automatically maps attack paths through your own data instead of relying on threat intelligence overlays. The service ingests VPC Flow Logs, CloudTrail, and GuardDuty findings natively, eliminating the integration tax that slows most DFIR tools. Skip this if your infrastructure lives outside AWS or you need forensics depth beyond the AWS perimeter; Detective excels at answering "how did the attacker move through our accounts" but won't help you reconstruct what happened on-premises or inside your applications.
Incident response teams and forensic investigators handling iOS devices or encrypted endpoints need FTK Imager Pro for its logical collection capability, which pulls messages, photos, and app data without full disk imaging, cutting acquisition time significantly. The tool's BitLocker detection and decryption paired with write-blocking covers NIST RS.AN and ID.RA requirements for evidence integrity and faster analysis cycles. Skip this if your primary need is network-layer incident detection or you lack dedicated forensics staff; FTK Imager Pro demands hands-on operator expertise and fits workflows where disk acquisition and mobile extraction are blocking your investigation timeline.
