Observations from the digital backyard-2

Good to have a catch-up chat with my old friend Vinny Parmar. Vinny holds the position Higher Digital Forensics personnel responsible as the Quality Representative (QR) for the Computer Forensics Department at West Midlands Police (WMP); the team responsible for having achieved UKAS Accreditation (iso17025) and ensuring its continued compliance and maintaining the standards. It is during my conversation with Vinny that I reminded, as from previous conversations with him, that Vinny's broad range of experience (worked in the private/public sectors, digital forensics, setting up a laboratory, and now UKAS Accreditation) should he decide to hang up his work boots (some way off yet) I think Vinny would be a great lecturer bringing cutting-edge, real-world working experience to University students.

I see Heather Mahalik has a new role as Senior Director of Digital Intelligence at Cellebrite and has just written a blog post about the reasons for joining the company ( Blog Post - Heather Mahalik ). For those that are not aware, Heather's background includes being a SANS Senior Instructor and co-authored the books Practical Mobile Forensics editions 1 and 2  and was the Technical Editor for the book Learning Android Forensics; all three published by Packt Publishing. Congratulations Heather and good luck in the new role.

There are quite a few founding fathers that have contributed to the evolution of digital forensics and cell site analysis. Previously I have mentioned back in 2014 the contribution Albert Einstein made to cell site analysis ( https://trewmte.blogspot.com/2014/07/csa-site-survey-method3mobility-models.html ) due to the mobile telecommunications industry adopting Einstein's 1926 “The Random Walk Mobility Model”. It seems only fair to mention another well-know character and celebrity forensicator no less, who celebrated his birthday back in June, and that is Batman (copyright DC Comics). Batman's role in using investigative forensics to solve crimes is very well known and some of his cases can be found here - The Forensic Files of Batman published by iBooks ISBN1596871156 (ISBN13: 9781596871151  see www.dcccomics.com and www.ibooks.net).

It is the use of Batman's punch index cards inserted into the Bat Computer which then computed the input, analysed the results and produced an output answer that some have observed this might be the originator for the concept of Computer Forensic Suites. So well done and our respects to Einstein and Batman for their contributions to our industry.