It is nomination time again for the Forensic 4:cast Awards and there’s still time to have your voice heard.

Nominations close on May 14, so act quickly. Results will be announced at the SANS 2021 DFIR Summit on July 22.

Why does MSAB deserve your consideration?

MSAB has dedicated its mission to enabling our customers make change that matters. Despite the enormous challenges triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, we have helped many agencies transform their workflows and practices, and acquire mobile data faster, easier and more securely than ever before.

We’ve been hard at work making big improvements across our entire product range. XRY is now faster than ever and supports decoding of data from both iOS and Android devices. XAMN has gone through several significant user experience improvements and the latest version replicates chat views in a super easy to understand layout. Meanwhile our XEC product range allows for greater supervision and support than ever before.

This blog post is going to highlight the categories in which we would like to be nominated and provide you with some information on why we believe we deserve your vote.

DFIR Commercial Tool of the Year – MSAB XRY

At MSAB we know the importance of continuous innovation. We are working hard to build a higher quality product for our customers by listening to your feedback and comments.

Our developers have been working hard on improving XRY to both enable investigators access an increased amount of data and to do so with faster extraction times.

XRY now can extract data from over 30,000 device and app profiles, including Signal, WhatsApp, TikTok, and more.

In order to support digital forensic examiners who need to bypass locks faster, we have significantly improved the Security Bypass feature to enable them access valuable data from locked Samsung Galaxy Exynos devices including the S9/S10 range running Android 10. We have also added additional support to brute-force passcodes on Samsung Exynos devices.

With the XRY fully integrated solution based on the checkm8 exploit, examiners can acquire an increased amount of data from iOS devices with noticeably faster extraction times.

XRY also enables law enforcement agencies to demonstrate that they are taking all reasonable technological steps to mitigate the risks associated with holding personal data obtained via mobile phone extraction. The XRY forensic file format has built in protection and encryption with a secure forensic file container designed to ensure a secure chain of custody of digital data and helps avoid the risks associated with data stored in open file formats.

As app versions and security protocols are constantly improved, mobile extraction tools can fail to extract decrypted app data. However, examiners can acquire Android app data using XRY Photon when other tools fail, with the added benefit of storing the documented data in a searchable way. This enables text search, filtering and other types of analysis.

DFIR Blog of the Year – MSAB Blog

MSAB believes that knowledge is a powerful tool to help make the world a safer place. That is why, over the past year, we have developed our forensic and evidence-centered blog.

With its focuses on news, stories from the real world and inspiration and guidance on how to use mobile forensics in the most effective ways possible, we believe it has been a valuable tool for our customers and the wider DFIR community.

Our experts – most of whom have a law enforcement background – span the theoretical, analytical and practical arenas, giving us the ability to take any solution from its conceptual stage all the way to its execution.

DFIR Degree Program or Training Class of the Year – Advanced App Analysis

We love to hear feedback about our courses, especially comments like these; “Great course that makes you want to do more of this. Great instructor who moves at a good pace and doesn’t ever seem to be rushed or stressed even if some are having a hard time keeping up.”

“Really good course. Trainer is competent and has a lot of knowledge that he is willing to share, which he does in a friendly and easy way.”

The Advanced App Analysis course covers all the elements needed to understand how to decode smartphone data, utilize Python scripts, analyze the contents and find the wealth of deleted information hidden in smartphone apps and their databases.

The Advanced App Analysis course has been put together by professional trainers who know exactly what examiners need to learn in order to be self-sufficient in the decryption and decoding of apps.

DFIR Social Media Contributor of the Year – Mike Dickinson

Mike loves social media and believes that it plays a massive role in our lives these days. Mike says he likes to not only closely follow major news stories, share helpful tips, tricks, and news with the DFIR community but also to discuss current events. If you appreciate what Mike has been sharing, then give him a vote.

Please take a moment to cast your vote in the 2021 Forensic 4:Cast Awards by clicking here.