Rob Fried On New Challenges In Digital Forensics
From Forensic Focus by Forensic Focus: Digital Forensics, Incident Response, DFIR
March 19, 2026 · 1h 5m
About this episode
Rob Fried discusses the evolving challenges in digital forensics, including AI's role and best practices for forensic work.
Rob Fried, digital forensics consultant, author, and assistant professor at Hofstra University, joins the Forensic Focus Podcast to talk about the evolving challenges of forensic practice, AI in investigations, and his latest book. Rob discusses his annual publication cadence — now in its fourth edition — and how each year's content is shaped by real cases, collaborations, and emerging topics in the DFIR community. This year's edition tackles AI policy, data culling strategy, and the documentation practices that keep forensic work defensible in court. The conversation also covers the growing complexity of remote collections and the soft skills required to manage them effectively, the tension between targeted and full file system approaches, and what happens when those decisions come under scrutiny in litigation. Rob shares his experience building a forensics practice from the ground up within an established e-discovery firm, his work teaching the next generation of examiners at Hofstra, and his upcoming symposium — now in its fifth year — which this year will focus on open source intelligence and corporate investigations. #mobileforensics #digitalforensics #dfir ⏱️ Timestamps…
People in this episode
Guest: Rob Fried
Topics covered
- digital forensics
- AI in investigations
- forensic practice challenges
- remote collections
- data strategy
- soft skills in forensics
Keywords
- digital forensics
- AI policy
- data culling
- remote collections
- forensic practice
- soft skills
- open source intelligence
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Hofstra University
Books & works: AI in investigations, annual publication, fourth edition, AI policy, data culling strategy, documentation practices, forensic work, open source intelligence, corporate investigations
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