June 1, 2026 Training Philosophy: Law Enforcement vs. Private Sector "Live like a flock feeding together with equal right in one common pasture. " -Zeno of Citium This month I’m going to re-visit an old topic, but it’s not so old that it’s irrelevant.   In fact, it comes up multiple times per year.   Recently, in an exchange with another user on the DFIR Discord server, a training opportunity was posted.   Some of it was law enforcement (LE)-restricted, some of it was not.   So I posed the question:   Why is (some) of this training LE-only? The answer I got back was less than substantive, but it begs the larger question yet again:   What is covered in law enforcement restricted training that is so specialized, secretive or otherwise sensitive that it needs to exclude everyone else? The Purpose of Training   In order to thoroughly dive into this topic, we must first take a step back and ask, what is the purpose of training, particularly in the fi...

  February 1, 2026 An Exploration of the Grad School Decision in DF/IR " It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows." -Epictetus I recently decided to return to school in pursuit of a Master’s Degree in my chosen field – Digital Forensics.   I often have students ask me whether or not an MS degree is necessary in DF/IR.   I suppose it isn’t, depending on what you want to do.   There was a lot of research and option-weighing that went into this decision.   I’m going to explore some of them here, and hopefully this will help the next person deciding whether or not to pursue a Graduate-level education in Digital Forensics.   At the very least, maybe it will be a good reminder for me to return to when things aren’t as exciting as I’d like them to be in this pursuit. Calculating Options Like a lot of both private and public entities that conduct any kind of technical work that requires continuing education, my employer offers a portion o...