2018 Nuix Insider Conference Recap

by Jessica Lyford

Close to 300 customers, partners, and guests converged at the Royal Lancaster London for Nuix’s annual Insider Conference last week to share their experience using Nuix or to learn something new to address their data, cybersecurity, risk, and compliance challenges. The scale of this year’s event symbolizes Nuix’s growth within the region, reflecting incredible growth within the region and globally.

The agenda was ambitious and offered something to pique everyone’s interest. The event kicked off with four keynote speakers before the bulk of the day was split into hands-on labs and sessions, which were divided into tracks for corporate, government, and law enforcement attendees. The day wrapped up with a lively customer panel, with panelists discussing current events and the best practices they’ve employed within their enterprises.

Special Guest Keynote

Leadership emerged as a key theme throughout the conference with surprise guest speaker Baroness (Eliza) Manningham-Buller, the former Director General of MI5, captivating delegates with her thoughts on leadership behavior and managing change under pressure.


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Eliza (the Baroness insisted everyone call her by her first name!) led the UK’s Security Service from 2002-2007, during which time the agency doubled in size with eight new offices and a training academy. She specialized in counterterrorism and led the investigation into the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the intelligence effort against the Provisional IRA.

The former MI5 director general pointed out that change is constant and necessary to success, and we shouldn’t be tied to doing things one way just because they have always been done that way. She lived this example by reinventing her organization, to great success—not the easiest thing to do. Often it’s during times of crisis that everyone feels the need to change and suggest how things could be done differently.

She also reminded leaders not to take themselves too seriously and to not underestimate the soft parts of leadership. Remaining humble, making your team always feel supported, and recognizing good work is key to effective leadership. Teamwork and collaborative relationships inside and outside of your organization are crucial. You could be the smartest person in the room, but if you can’t work as a team and put yourself in the shoes of those you work with, you won’t be the most effective person there.

One Engine And The Convergence Of Investigations

Group CEO Rod Vawdrey and CTO Stephen Stewart followed, touching on the convergence of investigations, eDiscovery, incident response, and governance. They noted how we are now seeing companies appoint Chief Risk Officers to oversee compliance, security, governance, risk, and employee matters, as these are all investigations into data, just differentiated by workflows, requirements, and outputs.

For example, digital forensics can be split into three areas—cybercrime, investigations, and Discovery—yet the type of information sought differs by customer. Typically, a corporation’s key concern is insider threats, finance is focused on embezzlement and bribery, and law enforcement and legal clients seek evidence for a court case, while data breach prevention cuts across all.

The Nuix Engine is like a “Swiss Army Knife” and can process it all, which feeds into our vision to bring everything together in a single pane of glass that can be deployed in-house or on demand in the cloud. Customers can then select the modules they need to solve today’s problems and add new capabilities as they need them. This vision is driven by the unique view of investigations into data that Rod and Stephen shared.

GDPR Ramifications

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation was a hot topic, with less than two months to go until it takes effect this May. Jimmy Desai from Keystone Law hit home that while this is the biggest regulatory change facing organizations in 20 years, many are still not taking it seriously enough, and some still think it’s optional.

He warned of the ramifications, including lack of investor interest in companies that can’t prove they are GDPR compliant. He also said GDPR must be considered as an organizational problem, not an IT problem, and often the CIO who leaves with immediate effect after a data breach is the one who knows best how to fix the problem.

Nuix’s solutions consultants tied his keynote into a practical GDPR preparedness hands-on lab, demonstrating to customers how they could use existing Nuix tools to identify personally identifiable information within their enterprise and easily handle digital subject access requests.

Government And Law Enforcement

From a government and law enforcement side, Nathan Coutts from the National Crime Agency had quite the crowd listening to how the agency automates and orchestrates its forensic processes. It does so to ensure repeatable evidence processing and transparency.

Luiz Borges from TechBiz Forensics presented some fascinating evidence how Brazil’s biggest integrator of computer forensic solutions has developed a new agile way to speed up digital forensic investigations. With an exploding volume of digital evidence, particularly mobile device evidence, 80% of a digital forensic analyst’s time is often spent processing irrelevant data, and together with MSAB, we were able to explain how investigators could triage mobile devices to identify the most relevant information.

A Packed Agenda

It’s difficult to do even a single-day event like the Insider Conference justice in a simple article, but even more so when the day is so packed with interesting sessions, conversations, and interactions with so many people in one place. The Nuix team at the event would like to thank everyone, especially our customers who took valuable time from their schedules to join us, for making the 2018 Insider Conference such a successful event.

About The Author

Jessica Lyford has close to a decade’s experience in corporate communications and content marketing in the technology, defense, health, financial services, and government sectors. Jess liaises with internal and external stakeholders to manage Nuix’s global customer advocacy program and create marketing communications including fact sheets, videos, podcasts, case studies, and press releases.

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