Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Infosecurity Europe

If you're the type of person who enjoys the company of middle-aged men in suits then Infosecurity Europe should probably be near the top of your list of conferences to attend. I last visited the show about 10 years ago when it was held in Olympia (Kensington, London) but it has since moved to a larger venue at Earls Court.

Infosecurity is very much the corporate face of the computer security industry and anyone who's visited or worked on one of the exhibitor stands will be familiar with the commercial heart of the event. There is more to it than just vendors, though, namely a series of free to attend talks, seminars and round-table discussions. Unless you're a large customer looking to develop pre-sales contacts or you're interested in learning more about a particular product I suspect the seminars are what you're going to get the most out of at Infosecurity.

So, what about forensics? Is there anything of interest to the forensic investigator as opposed to the computer security professional? Well, leaving aside the obvious benefits of learning more about a closely related discipline (cross-training for geeks, if you like) there are some highly relevant talks on the agenda:

"Who Should Police the Global Internet?"
"A Look at Global Encryption Deployment and Usage Trends"
"Anatomy of a Database Attack Through Forensics Analysis"
"The Dynamics of e-Crime"

Overall, though, Infosecurity does exactly what it says on the tin and caters first and foremost for corporate security professionals. I'll report back on some of the seminars I manage to see - right now I need to navigate my way to the other side of the hall avoiding as many sales pitches as possible (including those for the 10 minute massage!)

Monday, April 06, 2009

Interview with Professor Tony Sammes, Cranfield University

An interview with Tony Sammes, Emeritus Professor at Cranfield University and co-author of "Forensic Computing: A Practitioner's Guide", is now online at

http://www.forensicfocus.com/tony-sammes-interview-310309

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Virtual detection becomes a reality

A breakthrough in computer forensics technology was announced today when investigators were told they would no longer be required to rely on text-based or simple point and click interfaces, but will instead be able to fully immerse themselves in a virtual investigative environment based around the exploits of fictional TV detectives.

A spokesperson for April Software Solutions (ASS), developers of the new forensic tool, said, "The heart and soul of this new system is the Forensic Object-Oriented Language (F.O.O.L.) which was developed right here in our Peckham laboratory. Instead of scripting in Perl or some other language, the F.O.O.L. system allows the investigator to parse the evidence image and create a fully immersive 3D environment where they play the role of a famous TV detective such as Sherlock Holmes or that bloke from Life on Mars. Items which require investigation - the Windows Registry or browser cache for example - are turned into virtual suspects who can be brought in for interrogation."

ASS says that an expansion pack based around the character of Jack Bauer from 24 will be available in the summer to deal with strong encryption.