This year’s Forensic 4:cast Awards were held on Tuesday July 7, 2015. The awards were hosted, as always, by SANS at their DFIR Summit. We are grateful for their hosting of the awards and for everyone’s participation. This year we had over 10,000 votes, that is the most we’ve ever had for a single year and almost more than all previous awards combined. I often wonder about the longevity of the awards, thinking that this might be the last year, but I continue to be surprised each and every year.

The event was amazing, yet again. The room was full of people eagerly awaiting the results.

Some of the categories were painfully close. IEF nudged out Eric Zimmerman’s Shellbags Explorer by a small margin but the two most fiercely contested battles were for Digital Forensic Book of the year and Digital Forensic Investigator of the year.

In the book category the voting was extremely close. Both “Art of Memory Forensics” and “Practical Mobile Forensics” were neck-and-neck going into the last week of voting. The leader was changing daily but, with only a few days to go there was a sudden surge in voting with the memory forensics book pulling into the lead and stretching that lead with only hours to spare.

Bob Elder took the title of investigator of the year by the skin of his teeth, beating out Sarah Edwards by only THREE VOTES! I’ve been informed from a reliable source that if you didn’t vote for Sarah you may wake up to find a sawn-off laptop screen lying in your bed.

If you’d like to watch the awards ceremony you can see it here: 2015 Awards

The finalists for each category is listed below. The winners are highlighted in red.

Computer Forensic Software of the Year

Autopsy

Shellbags Explorer

Internet Evidence Finder

Digital Forensic Blog of the Year

Hacking Exposed Computer Forensics Blog

Cheeky4n6Monkey

Windows IR

Phone Forensic Hardware of the Year

UFED Touch

Logicube CellXtract

XRY Tablet

Digital Forensic Book of the Year

Art of Memory Forensics

Forensic Examination of Windows-Supported File Systems

Practical Mobile Forensics

Computer Forensic Hardware of the Year

Atola Insight Forensics

Tableau TD2u

Tableau T3iu

Phone Forensic Software of the Year

UFED 4PC

Internet Evidence Finder

Mobiledit Camera Ballistics

Digital Forensic Organization of the Year

Teel Tech

Cellebrite

SANS

Digital Forensic Investigator of the Year

Sarah Edwards

Bob Elder

Alejandro Perez