Thursday, January 9, 2014

Forensics 4cast Award Nominations

It's that time again...time to send in your nominations for the 2014 Forensic 4cast Awards. Nominations are now being accepted for the following categories:

Digital Forensic Blog of the Year
Digital Forensic Article of the Year
Digital Forensic Book of the Year
Computer Forensic Hardware Tool of the Year
Computer Forensic Software Tool of the Year
Phone Forensic Hardware Tool of the Year
Phone Forensic Software Tool of the Year
Digital Forensic Examiner of the Year
Digital Forensic Organisation of the Year

The awards ceremony has really become a much anticipated event each year after the whole thing started a few years back as a sort of tongue in cheek thing. I have to admit, it really brightened my day to be nominated for one of these awards 3 years ago and then to actually win the Digital Forensic Blog of the Year award last year. I hope everyone reading this post will head over to the Forensic 4cast site and nominate people for each of the categories.

The hardest part of this for me is trying to decide who to nominate and later vote for. Some categories aren't hard, but the blog and blog post of the year awards are always tough for me. There are so many high quality blogs out there that it's tough to just pick one. Corey Harrell, Jack Crook, Harlan Carvey and David Cowen all stand out this year with some excellent posts that I've learned a great deal from.

Likewise, the Digital Forensic Examiner of the Year is tough. I know so many people in the field whom I believe deserve an award like this that it's hard to pick just one.

I want to thank Lee Whitfield for all the hard work he puts in to these awards each year. Lee is a great friend and a great supporter of the DFIR community. I know he takes some guff from people who seem to think he should automatically include them or their product as nominees whether or not anyone actually nominates them and that's a shame. He deserves praise and thanks for bringing the awards to us each year instead of complaints from sore losers. These are the "people's choice" awards for DFIR and Lee just manages the show, he doesn't decide who gets nominated or who wins.

Okay, I'm off the soapbox now. So, get yourself on over to the Forensic 4cast Nominations announcement page and make your nominations.