FF: How are you doing Jad? How’s 2022 been for you and Magnet Forensics?
Jad: I’m doing great, thanks! 2022 has definitely been a busy year for Magnet Forensics. We were so grateful to see so many customers and industry friends this year, particularly at events like Techno Security, ICDDF, National ICAC, and of course, our Magnet User Summit in Nashville!
As a company, we continued seeing strong growth and brought on more amazing employees to make sure we’re doing everything we can for our customers. The commitment and enthusiasm of the entire Magnet Forensics team keeps us all striving to do better for those that rely on us.
What trends have you been noticing in digital forensics—both in the public safety and enterprise spaces?
We’re really starting to see automation and cloud solutions becoming more and more prominent in digital forensics labs around the world. As you know, we’ve been talking about the increasing tsunami of data coming to examiners for a long time and we’ve dedicated ourselves to creating solutions to help those challenges. As a result, we’re really seeing how tools like Magnet AUTOMATE can save valuable hours. In fact, in a recent case study, the Greater Manchester Police shared some of the success they’ve seen with their Magnet AUTOMATE deployment. They estimated that they saved up to 9.5 hours per case. That’s extremely rewarding to see. We want our customers to focus on the work that their expertise demands, not coming in after-hours just to advance a screen when processing data.
In the enterprise space, the hybrid workforce has a lot of examiners looking to the Cloud and using remote collections to find evidence of wrongdoing within their organizations. When someone within a company does something like exfiltrate data, or when a company is hit by ransomware, that can have potentially devasting consequences to the livelihoods of everyone that works there. Understanding and neutralizing those threats quickly is extremely important.
What are some highlights of what Magnet Forensics has brought to market this year?
One of the highlights we’re most proud of is our Magnet Digital Investigation Suite, and specifically Magnet AUTOMATE, Magnet REVIEW, and Magnet ATLAS—giving agencies around the world a chance to transform their digital investigations with powerful analytics and collaborate agency-wide, securely, and at scale. With Magnet REVIEW especially, we’ve continued to help agencies like London’s Metropolitan Police shift their existing paradigm of what digital forensic evidence review can look like.
I’m also pleased with the great updates within Magnet DVR Examiner, giving examiners more tools to work with when dealing with video forensics.
We continue to see lots of innovation happening within Magnet Idea Lab, giving members a chance to test and give feedback on the next generation of our products—including our memory analysis tool, Comae. If you’re interested in being a part of making our products what they need to be for our customers, be sure to sign up for Magnet Idea Lab today!
And, of course, we continue to bring great innovations to Magnet AXIOM, including a new Cloud Insights Dashboard, parsing-only processing & post-processing carving, and Dark Mode. We’ve also brought many new features into Magnet AXIOM Cyber, like the collection of volatile artifacts, scanning files with YARA rules, and the ability to create targeted locations.
What do we have to look forward to next year?
While I can’t share future product plans here, I can tell you we have a lot that we’re working on that I’m really excited about—all with the goal of helping our customers Seek Justice and Protect the Innocent. Keep coming back to magnetforensics.com or our social channels for the latest info! Also, I would be honored to have you join us for one of our upcoming events, including Magnet Virtual Summit 2023 in February and Magnet User Summit 2023 in April.
Anything else you’d like to share?
First off, I want to thank every one of our customers, employees, and DFIR friends—your continued support of Magnet Forensics is immensely appreciated, and we’re proud to work alongside each of you. We look forward to an exciting year ahead, working together as a collective team. And lastly, I want to take this opportunity to shine a light on our customers and their tremendous dedication and tireless efforts. One of these customers is the Los Angeles Police Department, who we recently partnered with on a video highlighting their Internet Crimes Against Children task force. We were grateful for the opportunity to join them while they performed their duty, so we could share the critical work they do (which I know is representative of so many of you). So, if you have a few minutes, I hope you can watch this Magnet Spotlight video that showcases the LAPD team and shares more about what we can all do to combat child exploitation.
