March 1, 2025 Dabblers v. Professionals " If you do the job in a principled way, with diligence, energy, and patience, if you keep yourself free of distractions, and keep the spirit inside you undamaged… then everything you do will be suffused with justice." -Marcus Aurelius I recently had a discussion with a colleague or two while attending the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) annual meeting in Baltimore, MD.   These discussions revolved around the observation that digital forensics, unlike any other forensic discipline, attracts all kinds of “practitioners” who think they can do the job to an professional, expert-level degree (and tell their clientele they can do the job), but in reality, they are lacking many of the baser elements to practicing a true forensic science discipline.   There are several reasons for this, but first, I think it’s important to draw the corollaries between digital forensics and other “hard” forensic sciences.   For the purp...

The Pyramid of DF/IR Expertise "First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do." -Epictetus I woke up one day and realized I’m an Executive at a Nationwide Digital Forensic & E-Discovery professional services firm.   How did that happen?   I also woke up one day and realized I have 25 years in the justice system.   If I’d stayed in law enforcement, I could retire this year.   All of these things are simultaneously shocking and sobering.   They cause one to really reflect on the steps that it took to get them to where they have arrived.   It also causes one to take inventor of all of the opportunities, successes, mistakes, failures, training, experience, case work and daily practice – both mental and practical – that go into building a body of work.   It also makes one feel old all of a sudden, but “old(er)” doesn’t have to equal bad, as I’ve come to learn. But how does one get to this point?   As many of my colleagues...