Building Your Foundation: Getting Started in Digital Forensics | SANS@MIC Talk

Developing in any profession often requires understanding the core foundations and fundamental skill and knowledge areas for the profession. Just like you cannot build a house without the right foundation, the same is true in digital forensics and incident response. So much of the existing training in this field focuses on the operational and technical aspects of the work, but we know that there have been areas that are crucial to the profession, including soft skills, logical thinking, investigative mindsets and more. SANS has developed the new FOP308 Digital Forensics Essentials course to lay a solid foundation to become a well rounded digital forensicator, providing training in areas of digital forensics that are considered foundational, and applicable to all areas of digital forensics. This Cybercast @Mic talk will give you a good oversight of some of the key skills and knowledge areas that we will be teaching in the new FOR308 course and show why these skills and important for any forensicator, both new and established. Speaker Bio Jason Jordaan is passionate forensicator, who has been practicing digital forensics since 1998 in both the law enforcement and private sectors. He has testified on several occasion in the South African High Court as an expert witness. He is the founder and managing director of DFIRLABS, an independent, private digital forensics and incident response laboratory. Jason has also been involved in training, lecturing, and mentoring in the field of digital forensics since 2010. Besides his training for SANS, he currently teaches the digital forensics and incident response class at Rhodes University in South Africa for their Masters Degree in Information Security. He is also an active researcher and writer and has been published in several textbooks and academic journals. Prior to founding DFIRLABS, Jason was the national head of the Cyber Forensic Laboratory of the Special Investigating Unit in South Africa, which was an elite law enforcement agency with jurisdiction into white collar crimes involving government institutions, which included cyber crime targeting them. He remains very active in the law enforcement community through the mentoring of law enforcement officials around the globe as part of IACIS, and has mentored law enforcement officers in New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, and Finland. Jason has a Masters degree in Computer Science (Cum Laude), a Masters degree in Forensic Investigation, an Honors degree in Information Systems, a Bachelors degree in Criminal Justice Computer Science, and a Bachelors degree in Policing. He holds the CFCE, GCFE, and CFE certifications