The Road to CEIC 2013: BYOD to CEIC!

Jessica Bair

The “Road to CEIC 2013” is a series of blog posts on all things CEIC, before, during, and after, from an insider’s point of view.

The Smartphone, Social Media and Cloud Investigations track provides solutions to manage the issues that come with a more mobile, connected and dispersed population and workforce. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) offers employees and organizations countless business benefits, from increased efficiency to controlling costs on provisioning a mobile workforce. This comes with the inevitable question: How do we support all these devices in a secure environment, while allowing the workforce to be productive? This will be the focus of The Technical Challenges of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) discussion with Rodney Smith, Guidance Software director of IT security, Michael Sparks of Intel, and Kia Hakimi of Best Buy. BYOD policy considerations, management of personal information on the devices, device discovery, over-the-air-configuration, self-service portals, cloud based repositories for BYOD data (e.g. Box.com and MobileIron), and managing data usage; these are all critically important to every organization, as we are all mobile. If BYOD is your pain point at work, you should also attend E-Discovery Case Law: Legal ramifications of BYOD.


This track also provides labs on the cutting edge technical solutions available for digital evidence examiners. Consider the Investigation on Kindle Fire, with Guidance Software Master Instructor James Habben and Shelby Mertins, Nebraska State Patrol. James has done an incredible amount of original research on the first generation Kindle Fire. James developed a process and built a utility that will decrypt the email data in a SQLite database, and he will demonstrate this in the session. Shelby will be bringing real-world case work, reviewing a child pornography investigation where evidence from a Kindle Fire was critical to the case. The suspect tried to clean up the web history; however, they were able to still find remnants of the browsing activity. You can also catch James’ lab on Artifacts of Webmail Usage, covering the latest tools and techniques for recovering web-based email. There are also labs on forensics for vehicle systems, damaged mobile devices, social media & cloud computing artifacts on Smartphones and tablets, and more.

EnCase v7.07 will be on every lab desktop. With support for iOS 6, you can plug in your Smartphone or tablet and take a look at what artifacts are on your phone!

Smartphone, Social Media and Cloud Investigations

• Investigation on Kindle Fire
• Evidence in the Cloud - Business Use of Online Services
• The Technical Challenges of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
• Artifacts of Webmail Usage
• Logical vs. Physical Acquisition (and Acquisition Differences) on Mobile Devices
• Using Cloud Computing in Computer Forensics & Electronic Discovery
• E-Discovery Case Law: Legal ramifications of BYOD
• Social Media and Cloud Computing Artifacts on Smart Phones and Tablets
• Getting the Evidence when the Evidence is in Pieces: Damaged Mobile Devices
• Vehicle System Forensics
• EnCase Phone Acquisitions

This week is the deadline for presenters to submit their evidence and tools for inclusion on the hundreds of lab machine that will be configured and installed at CEIC. It is an immense undertaking managed by Jamey Tubbs (@jameytubbs). I just sent out my final reminders and offers of assistance to the presenters of the Cybersecurity and Compliance Labs. We are going to have so many great labs! Yesterday, Aaron Bennett and I did our first full walk through on the How to Configure and Use SQL with EnCase Products lab. Aaron has done amazing work, and it is so popular it is in two lab tracks: Cybersecurity and Compliance Labs (Monday, 11:00 AM to noon) and E-Discovery Labs for the Practitioner (Monday, 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM).

Two Great CEIC Discount Programs

We understand the US Government budget cuts are hitting every agency. For a limited time, you can buy one CEIC registration and get one free. Restrictions apply. There is a special discount code for when you register: FEDGOVBOGO.

Don’t forget, between now and May 10, 2013, you’ll receive a free pass to CEIC 2013, valued at $995.00 USD with every full-price Guidance Software Annual Training Passport your organization purchases. Use offer code SPRING FORWARD to qualify. Sign Up Here for your Annual Training Passport and receive your free pass to attend CEIC 2013! (@CEIC_CONF #CEIC2013)

Jessica Bair
Senior Director, Curriculum Development
@jessicambair