JUNE 23@5PM — Cyber Crime Roundtable with SGT John Bedell and CEO Amber Schroader

Register to attend here.

Our Central Maryland Chapter is hosting the second Mid-Atlantic Quarterly Meeting.

They have lined up a great duo of speakers, SGT John Bedell heads up the Maryland State Police’s Criminal Investigations Bureau. Amber Schroader is the CEO of Paraben Corp., a smart device digital forensics powerhouse. The two of them will be speaking on current trends and challenges in cyber crime, how it is impacting our communities and some tips and war stories on how to go about collecting ievidence in these cases. The ubiquitous mobile device has become a key source of evidence in all sorts of criminal investigations, not just cyber, and understanding what can be found and how to find it is key for modern investigators. We should learn a lot from these two experienced veterans on just how to do that.

Speaker: Sgt John Bedell, MD State Police

Sgt, John Bedell was just promoted to the position of Executive Officer for Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Maryland State Department of Police.  He began his sixteen-year career as a patrol officer.   As EO, he serves under the Lieutenant Colonel assisting in the operations and management of the Licensing Division, Criminal Enforcement Division, and Forensic Sciences Division.  He works with the Executive Officers of the other bureaus to help coordinate inter-bureau activities.  Prior to his current position he was a Digital Forensic Examiner for six years.  He conducted scene triage as well as full forensic examination in a laboratory setting. He examined servers, computers and mobile devices with a variety of tools including EnCase, BlackLight, Axiom, Cellebrite, Oxygen, and other commercial software. Supervise all of the other examiners and assist in large projects as requested.  He also served three years a Network Security Office and four years as Collision Reconstruction Specialist.  He has a degree in Cybersecurity from the University of Maryland Global Campus.  He is a GIAC Certified Incident Handler and Certified Forensic Examiner.

Speaker: Amber Schroader, CEO & Founder, Paraben Corporation

Over the past three decades, Ms. Schroader has been a driving force for innovation in digital forensics. Ms. Schroader has developed numerous software programs, courses, and guides in the areas of recovering data from smartphones, computer hard drives, cloud, email, and gaming systems. Ms. Schroader’s established protocols for the seizure and processing of digital evidence that has been used by numerous organizations throughout the world. Ms. Schroader has coined the concept of the “360-degree approach to digital forensics” and “Forensics of Everything-FoE” with her focus on unique problems in digital evidence and solutions. Ms. Schroader has been a huge industry influence in pushing for a big-picture consideration of digital evidence. An accomplished design architect, curriculum developer, and instructor; Ms. Schroader has written and taught numerous classes for this specialized field as well as founded multiple certifications. Ms. Schroader continues to support her through book contributions and other industry speaking engagements.

Mid-Atlantic Quarterly Meetings

After the pandemic forced us to shut down face-to-face meetings, Alex Grohmann of ISSA International reached out to the boards of the ISSA NOVA, Central MD, and DC chapters, and suggested we collaborate on some form of shared meeting. The idea was to twofold. First of all, increase our inter-chapter networking, which was actually easier to do via online meetings, and secondly, pool our members so that we could attract great speakers not just locally but nationally. The end result was the Mid-Atlantic Quarterly Meeting, which the three chapters will take turns hosting. The Mid-Atlantic Quarterly Meeting in June will serve in lieu of our normal ISSA-NOVA monthly meeting. Please note the early start time of 5PM!