Inside F3: Building Community And Sharing Knowledge In Digital Forensics

20/10/2025 1h 0min
Inside F3: Building Community And Sharing Knowledge In Digital Forensics

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Episode Synopsis

Gareth Davies, Chairman of F3 (First Forensic Forum), joins the Forensic Focus Podcast to explore how a grassroots, vendor-neutral community has helped shape digital forensics in the UK for three decades. He traces F3's origins in the 1990s, when affordable training and tool-agnostic knowledge-sharing were scarce, and explains why the forum still focuses on byte-level, lab-ready techniques over sales pitches. Looking ahead, Gareth previews F3's 2025 conference in Warwickshire (Nov 18–20), the not-for-profit pricing model, and upcoming trainings on UAVs, software-defined radio, implants/biomed devices, smartwatch and vehicle forensics, and video authentication/deepfakes. He also discusses international growth (including interest in an Australian chapter) and an open call for volunteers to help run events and keep training affordable. #DigitalForensics #DFIR #ForensicsTraining #IncidentResponse #VehicleForensics #CryberCrime #DigitalEvidence #DigitalInvestigtion #DigitalEvidence 👉 Visit Forensic Focus at https://www.forensicfocus.com 00:00 Introducing Gareth Davies 01:09 What is F3? 03:01 Gareth's Journey into Forensics 05:35 PhD and Research Work 06:54 Current Role and Responsibilities 09:08 Interesting Cases and Projects 12:27 Involvement with F3 14:41 F3's Global Reach and Community 20:03 Challenges and Future of F3 22:39 Personal Experiences and Networking 24:47 Becoming Chairman of F3 30:50 Upcoming F3 Event Details 35:28 Digital Forensics Teaching and Research 37:30 Upcoming F3 Training 42:38 Challenges in Digital Forensics 45:28 The Importance of Community and Resources 55:04 Personal Interests and Hobbies 57:46 Conclusion and Final Thoughts 🎥 Video/Transcript – https://www.forensicfocus.com/podcast/inside-f3-building-community-and-sharing-knowledge-in-digital-forensics/ 📝 Show Notes F3 – First Forensic Forum website - https://f3.org.uk F3 – First Forensic Forum LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/f3.org.uk/ Spyder Forensics - https://www.spyderforensics.com Bénédictine - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9n%C3%A9dictine APOLLO - https://github.com/mac4n6/APOLLO DFRWS - https://dfrws.org GCK File Signature Table - https://filesig.search.org NIST - https://www.nist.gov/itl/ssd/digital-forensics 👉 Follow Forensic Focus here: RSS | https://www.forensicfocus.com/feed/ YouTube | https://youtube.com/@ForensicFocus Podcast | https://forensicfocus.com/podcast LinkedIn Page | https://linkedin.com/company/forensicfocus LinkedIn Group | https://linkedin.com/groups/693917 X | https://x.com/ForensicFocus Facebook | https://facebook.com/forensicfocus Bluesky | https://bsky.app/profile/forensicfocus.bsky.social Instagram | https://instagram.com/forensicfocus TikTok | https://tiktok.com/@forensicfocus Mastodon | https://dfir.social/@forensicfocus Website | https://www.forensicfocus.com

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