Forensic 4cast Awards – 2011 Results

Last Tuesday saw the SANS Forensic Summit, in Austin Texas, host the third annual Forensic 4cast Awards. Each year this event picks up more and more momentum, it is a delight to be involved in it.

The event was well attended with a large number of the nominees in the crowd. The ballroom at the Omni Hotel was almost at capacity as everyone waited, with bated breath, for the results.

Once again the legend that is Rob Lee walked away with an award. It appears that he truly has the admiration and respect of his peers, and deservedly so. This year his award was for his article “Digital Forensic SIFTing: SUPER Timeline Analysis and Creation”. The title is a bit of a mouthful but the content is awesome.

Harlan Carvey took two awards. One for his new book “Windows Registry Analysis” and the other was for his overall contribution to the field of digital forensics over the last year. Harlan was quick to thank everyone that nominated and voted for him. On Twitter he said “Thank you to the community of my peers for the mad propz & shoutz.”

It seems as if Harlan and Rob are not the only year-on-year winners of awards either. Cellebrite won the category for “Best Phone Forensic Hardware” for a third consecutive year. Will their success continue into 2012 or will someone else produce a product that can topple the mighty UFED?

A deserved award went to Eric Huber for the commitment and time he puts into maintaining his blog, “A Fistful of Dongles”. Eric was ecstatic to win and assures me that the award will take a place of prominence in his home – supplanting pictures of his family.

The big story of the night was Guidance Software. They took a record breaking three awards for their efforts with CEIC, EnCase Forensics, and the Tableau TD1. Sadly no one from Guidance was there to accept the awards but I’m informed that the company was over the moon to win, sending out company-wide emails to all all employees.

Congratulations also go to Mandiant and Jonathan Rajewski who won the awards for “Best Civilian Forensic Team” and “Digital Forensic Investigator of the Year” respectively. Their work in the field has been truly remarkable and both thoroughly deserve both the awards and the associated recognition.

Finally, a big thank-you to everyone that nominated and voted for Forensic 4cast. I know that winning one of your own awards may seem a little silly but it truly means a lot. I work hard to make both the podcast and the awards a success. My only regret is that I couldn’t split the award three ways with both Joe Garcia and Ovie Carroll.

Thanks for voting everyone. As Rob said at the close of the awards, this is entirely community driven and is the only vendor neutral awards ceremony for our field. Without your continued support it would never have been the success it is today.

The full list of results can be found at http://www.forensic4cast.com/forensic-4cast-awards/