"I'd said I wanted to send you a few thoughts about our experience so far with the FTK suite in our computer forensics classes.
First, this is the third year I've been teaching computer forensics here, it began as a collaboration between me and the head of the Administration of Justice program, Mark Tarte. We ran it through community education one semester, to see if we'd have enough of a response to interest our deans in a regular class.
FTK wasn't on my radar at that time, and I got a 50% discount on 3 copies of Encase to use in the lab, together with open source software and demos.
There was some good PDFs, and webex things on their site, but nothing really as a place to start in teaching. Also, they had a very restrictive agreement
- that we not teach the interface for more than 17 hours in a semester. That kind of makes it hard to center a class around hands on lab work.
As I've been in the HTCIA and through some of their trainings and conferences, I'd seen FTK and met you folks. So, when I put in for VATEA federal funding this year to take the next step on realizing our goal of a regional forensics training facility for the community, local business, and law enforcement agencies, I went to all the software vendors I knew to look for the best deal.
We're committed to teaching on 3 platforms for all my classes, so I knew I'd want a copy of BlackBag or MacForensics. I also hoped to upgrade my several generation old copies of Encase. However, it's been clear for a while that the interface that's most transparent to the work and teaching the concepts is FTK.
FTK came through with a great package for a classroom - large enough for us, but small enough we could do it on our limited budget. Also, since the package included a training voucher, Access Data has been great about putting that toward an advanced class, since I've already had bootcamp and intro classes.
We're basically sold on FTK from a number of points of view - the most important being the ease of getting students off the dime and into working on a lab. Key to that was the great offer of using the images Access Data already had.
In every way, FTK / AD has been supportive and there for us - and not even counting it's the FBI choice now, it's certainly my choice for teaching students computer forensics concepts in a way that helps them be both platform independent and application independent. No one piece of software does everything, and we need to give them an experience of a range, but get them comfortable with one thing that is the main lab experience - and the FTK suite has been that. It's very important, because, using the Hybrid / Online method for our class, students can do the class / lab / lecture in person, and in the lab, or totally online, or any combination. Lots of times the students are remoting in to a lab machine on their own time - anything in the software that hangs them up keeps them from completing their work until they can contact me and get help. The easy gui, together with great help and a great PDF manual have minimised the problems.
We can really achieve our goal of a set of courses that prepare students for an entry level forensics certification, and, together with other networking and Administration of Justice classes, gets them a Certificate of Achievement in Computer Forensics.
Thanks again for a great program - and we're looking forward to the new version. Lastly, as I keep working on new labs, and converting the old ones to online versions to suite our hybrid / online class presentation, please feel free to tell the training folks they are welcome to use whatever training materials I've created here - it's only fair since they have helped me out so much."
John Gonder
Las Positas College
Cisco Networking Academy Computer Networking Technologies
"As a pioneer leader and trainer for Law Enforcement, in the Computer Forensic Arena, and as an "In the Trench" Forensics Specialist; I have found that Tunnel Vision can develop to the best Forensic Examiner. FTK and PRTK has been a tremendously helpful tool in my arsenal for helping me, expand my options in my daily computer forensic examiner routines. Even though, yes, other Forensic Tools and Methodologies are taught by other vendors; Access Data in my mind is on the cutting edge for what Forensic Examiners need in their toolkit when dealing with today's paradigm shifting trends of data recovery schemes. Spread the word, others need to know about this!"
Eric Lundberg
President- Cyber Enforcement Resources, Inc.
Course was excellent. Instructor was excellent. I really enjoyed attending the training and plan on using Access vs. Encase in the future."
Kathryn M. Roberts
Senior Special Agent
DLA Criminal Investigations Activity-Columbus
"I want to thank you for such an excellent class. As an IT worker (and someone holds everyone else in my field to an incredibly high standard) it is rare that I leave even a hands-on training impressed - I left this training impressed by both your knowledge of the product; your organization; and your teaching methods. I hope that we can work together in the future."
Arieh S. Davidoff
Consultant
Rachlin Cohen & Holtz LLP
"Out of all the other programs that I have seen and used I love FTK the best."
Ramon Ramirez
Miami Police Department
"I had this problem a few months back. I ran Access Data's PRTK against the QBW file for the particular business and was able to get the password (my files actually had 3 passwords each for different users). When Quickbooks asked for the password, I plugged in the recovered one and it worked like a charm."
Dave Melvin
Senior Special Agent, CFA, CFCE
CyberCrimes Group
Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
Dept. of Homeland Security
Hello,
We are very proud of your efforts to making a positive change in the world of consumers and consumer markets. As a matter of fact your product has been very good to me personally. I have to absolutely show and tell all gratitude. My company was so impressed with your product. In fact if you don't mind. We awarded your product with the certificate of being: