John, the last time you were interviewed at Forensic Focus you were the Vice Chairman and Chief Legal Officer at Guidance Software. Now you're the founder and CEO of X1 Discovery - tell us about that move.

I am proud to have been a co-founder and part of the senior team at Guidance Software for ten years. The early days at Guidance were exciting as we sowed new fields, just as we are doing now at X1 Discovery. At Guidance, we first pioneered Windows-based forensics, which was the new paradigm and represented an order of magnitude improvement over Dos-based forensics. Then circa 2004, we introduced and championed the concept of enterprise in-house eDiscovery, a strategy that ended up being Guidance’s main force of growth leading to our IPO in 2006.   more ...

Can you tell us something about your background and why you decided to work in the field of applied trauma psychology?

I have had a very mixed career; I have worked in medical research, as a retail operations director, property development, Head of a counselling service and running my own company. I think that the fact that I have had lots of experience doing different things has been really helpful to me. Although I love research, at heart I am a practitioner and enjoy working with people and organisations to help them to have happy and healthy lives.

I don’t think that I set out to be an applied trauma psychologist – it was just that the work was interesting and I could see that it helped people deal with difficult issues.   more ...

Can you tell us something about your background and how you became involved in digital forensics?

I spent 22 years in the Royal Air Force Police specialising as a Counter Intelligence and Information Technology Security investigator; supporting criminal and security investigations by the examination of recovered computer media, using recognised forensic techniques. I have over twenty years experience of carrying out computer audits and investigating incidents of computer misuse, virus attacks, hacking and loss & theft of data. I have been in the private sector, specialising in digital forensics, for the last 8 years and have worked on behalf of law enforcement agencies, solicitors and corporate clients on a variety of UK based and international cases.   more ...

Jad, can you tell us something about your background and how you became involved in digital forensics?

It all started when I was a teenager and first got exposed to computers and software. I immediately was drawn to understanding how things worked and began writing software to solve problems. In fact, at age 15 I sold a disk utility program that I developed to a Danish bank. After high school, I was formally educated in network security and computer science.

After spending some time in the corporate world as a network administrator at a large software company I decided to follow my dream of becoming a police officer. I started out as a Constable and later joined the Tech Crime Unit as one of the forensic examiners. This was a dream job for me as I could marry my love for computers with my passion for policing.   more ...

Yuri is the founder of Belkasoft, an independent software vendor specializing in computer forensics and system software for the Windows and Mac OS platforms.


Yuri, can you tell us something about your background and who you are?

I have a degree in mathematics and software engineering. I graduated with honors from St-Petersburg State University, Mathematical and Mechanical faculty. This is one of the oldest and best universities in the second largest city in Russia, famous for its white nights in June when you can even read at night being outside.   more ...