Abdeslam, please tell us about the upcoming international roadshows from AccessData.
We’ve planned a series of international roadshows to share the details of our latest software release, AccessData 6.2, which helps users improve productivity and reduce backlog, leading to faster investigative results.
Our customers continue to face challenges in their work – data sets are getting larger, deadlines for collecting, analyzing and processing data in cases are tighter and tighter. New forms of data are constantly emerging as the result of the Internet of Things (IoT), new devices that rapidly produce data as well as new data repositories – like the cloud. All of these are impacting the ability to conduct investigations more efficiently and effectively and to identify the relevant data to prove their cases.We are excited to demonstrate how this release addresses those concerns. Whether they need to search for and collect specific files for litigation or process data for an internal investigation, AccessData 6.2 delivers the most advanced digital forensic, e-discovery and post-incident analysis on the market.
What cities will you be visiting for these roadshows?
We will start our roadshows in Europe, visiting London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris and Rome. We’ll then move on to the Eastern European cities of Vilnius, Bucharest, Budapest and Prague. More cities will be added in the Asia Pacific region, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America in early summer.
Who are you trying to reach with the presentations?
We are inviting both current AccessData clients, as well as non-users who are looking to dramatically streamline their investigative process. During each roadshow, we will be sharing detailed information about the release, a demo of some of the products and a question and answer session at the end. It will be a great way for attendees to connect with our AccessData executives and partners.
Can you provide us with a sneak preview of what you’ll be sharing with the audiences?
Sure. Our chief evangelist will lead the conversation in most cities, discussing industry trends, as well as what we are hearing from clients that keeps them up at night. Most notably, it’s the concern around the growth and management of large data, quick turnaround times that are required in this line of work, and how to best handle new forms of data.
How does this release address those concerns?
AccessData 6.2 provides deeper insights into our clients’ data with powerful new tools designed for visualizing data, forming connections and providing at-a-glance status and updates. They’ll be able to gain tighter control over their data—and who has access to it—with robust administrator tools and a simplified interface. It’s also really fast! We’ve set the standard for forensic processing with speeds that are now 22% faster as compared to 6.1. Enhancements across the portfolio are just as impressive.
AD Lab is even faster with four times the processing speed for near instantaneous data analysis. By processing data faster, our clients enjoy smaller backlogs, better response times and reduced costs. In fact, rising case volumes are no match for AD Lab – with virtually limitless scalability, users are limited only by the hardware they can provide. The more hardware they’re able to deploy, the more data they can process. Also new to AD Lab is the Web UI, a powerful review interface that connects non-forensic investigators, detectives, lawyers and other users for comprehensive data review.
Forensic Toolkit® (FTK®) as many people know, is a court-cited digital investigations platform. It is the only digital investigation solution that reduces case investigative times by allowing users to review data and identify relevant evidence, all in one centralized location. AD Enterprise was built on the FTK platform and enables access to multiple office locations and remote workers across the network. Both products feature enhanced email threading which enables investigators to understand data in the context of a conversation, and mobile analysis capabilities, which improves the overall workflow efficiency. Automatic parsing for all modern operating systems means that users can recognize and parse keyword searches and destination lists, parse, review and analyze mobile chats on both mobile and desktop chat applications and search and parse emails, attachments and contacts.
AD eDiscovery is an integrated end-to-end platform which helps our corporate customers better mitigate risk, ensure compliance and improve incident response efficiency. New features include an HTML 5 dashboard providing users with a single, comprehensive view into the status of collection, processing, litigation holds and document review.
Overall, the release of 6.2 addresses our clients concerns by providing remarkably faster processing speeds, virtually limitless scalability, and better usability across all of our products.
How does this initiative fit into the larger context of what AD is trying to achieve with its outreach to the market?
We are celebrating our 30th anniversary this year and are intensely focused on the future. With a portfolio of industry-leading software tools and an exciting strategic vision in place, we are committed to advancing our customer relationships, meeting and exceeding their needs more than ever. To this point, this release is loaded with customer requested features and technology driven advancements, all with a laser focus on customer needs.
Can you tell us about where you’re headed with product development in the digital forensics space?
Listening to our customers helps us build products that enable faster results, better insights and more connectivity. Part of that insight was garnered from a December 2016 survey which we conducted with IDG Enterprise. The survey was sent to C-level executives at large enterprises to find out the types of digital investigations they were conducting and where they were encountering challenges in swiftly, efficiently and effectively managing digital investigations at their company. The biggest issue they selected was the cost of time spent on investigations, followed by siloed data repositories, lack of solution integration, lack of visibility across endpoints, and lack of powerful distributed processing to help them get through large, complex datasets more quickly. Our industry-leading solutions serve to address these customer issues now and in the future.
We’d be happy to talk more about this release at one of our upcoming roadshows. Here is where you can register.
Abdeslam Afras is vice president of international markets, based in the AccessData Frankfurt, Germany office. Afras has nearly 25 years of experience in business-to-business information technology and was most recently director of AccessData’s EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) and India regions. He has served in the international markets division for AccessData since 2010.
In addition to his roles at AccessData, Afras has also served in management positions for the European business groups at Recommind, Data Room Services and Iron Mountain Digital. He studied computer science and economics at Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University in Frankfurt and earned an international degree from Avans University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands.
