When it comes to memories, few might be more precious than the photos we take of family, friends and pets, of firsts and lasts, of special occasions and daily selfies, of vacation landscapes and neighborhood sunsets. Our life in pictures is sacred. We know this from our own experience, and from you sharing yours via our photo contests. Judging for 2016 is underway.

Cybersecurity, always important and always an IT focus, became quite the topical issue during – and after – the election cycle. And there are some takeaways for individuals, organizations, businesses and agencies – as well as for President-elect Donald Trump – from the 34-page report released Jan. 5 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies titled “From Awareness to Action: A Cybersecurity Agenda for the 45^th President.”

Human behavior poses the greatest threat to corporate security, according to almost all corporate information security practitioners queried in the third annual survey conducted by Nuix, a global information security and ediscovery company. While businesses have invested to develop broad and mature cybersecurity capabilities, many survey respondents reported they were uncertain about the most effective technologies and capabilities to focus on.

In its fourth annual “Data Breach Industry Forecast” white paper, information services company Experian says the healthcare industry will be the most targeted sector for cyberhacks in 2017.

Many of our customers like bare disk drive workflows. Maybe they want to keep client or project work on separate disk drives, like using our TrayFree™ enclosures. These enclosure systems let people swap drives or SSDs at will and have the added convenience of only buying the electronics once. (BTW, these customers also tend to use our DriveBoxes, available to protect 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch drives.)

We just finished up exhibiting at the Enfuse conference, where we had a chance to catch up with investigators and IT people from various government agencies, as well as private sector companies. We had fun sharing the news about our new Ditto DX imager and how it will speed up data acquisition, especially for those who have incorporated Logical Imaging into their workflows. And we continue to be pleasantly surprised by those who see the value of forensic acquisition in e-discovery. In fact, one of our name-brand customers in the world of cyber security has created a workflow for their seven global regions to create an archive of ex-employee data for future investigation or litigation. 

Digital forensics investigators often ask us to create special field kits. Maybe they need a particular WriteBlocker, cables, and space for hard drives. Or they want to deploy consistent toolkits in the field. We respond by finding the right size Pelican case (or color, as it was with a US agency and our orange field kit), fashioning foam with custom cutouts, and including the right products for efficient digital investigation workflows.

Last week, I was at the PhotoPlus show where we always hear horror stories about data
loss (the guy whose internal hard drive died, causing him to try to revive it so he can get
his 10 years of data; someone else who is spending thousands of dollars to get client images
from a failed drive; one photographer telling another about the wedding photos he lost).
There's no shortage of accounts from those who learn the hard way about maintaining backup
discipline.

I love New York (someone should create a marketing campaign around that). We were there last week
to exhibit at the PhotoPlus Expo, a gathering of photographers and vendors of all kinds. I had a chance
to walk around one afternoon and use my old iPhone (I must be in the minority of people who like smaller
devices, despite my aging eyes) to get a few images, including the iconic Chrysler building and the
headquarters of my favorite newspaper.