Personal Blog

Working in computer forensics is challenging. From dramatic stories to head stretching terminology, I have been enmeshed into an industry that is exciting and contemporary. For someone who is not familiar with FTK or SHA-1, computer forensics is simply detective work on computers.

Being a detective has more intrigue on television than in real life. Real life detective work involves real people, their lives, and commonly lots of stressful communication with the goal of resolving a major question. With detective work, the lifestyle can get boring, but the intrigue of solving a puzzle remains. Detective work on a computer is much the same, only without a large amount of travel. Much of the research is achieved from a ‘remote’ location, where digital evidence is preserved and then analyzed with court approved tools.

Lyophilization is more commonly known as freeze-drying. Lyophilization is a process of drying something without damaging its internal structure. It is basically used to dry materials which are sensitive to heat or have delicate structures. Lyophilization is a complex process of drying sensitive things and so it is expensive. The only substance which cannot be preserved by this processs is mammalian cells as they are very fragile.

The biotechnology industry has many methods of preservation but the preferred one is lyophilization. Lyophilization is used to preserve vaccines, pharmaceuticals and other proteins. Freeze-drying is sometimes used to preserve food products thus eliminating the need for refrigeration. The food products dried using such techniques are used by mountain climbers and astronauts. Freeze-dried products are highly absorbent as freeze-drying removes most of the water from them and so adding water can help restore these products to something close to its original state.

IT infrastructure Library (ITIL) has been around since 1989. Since v2 was released at the beginning of the millennium, there has been a shift in the perspective with which IT is viewed. Adopting ITIL 2 has cut the total cost of ownership (TCO) for billion dollar corporations by up to 48% according to internet.com.

While ITIL 2 has helped organizations who have implemented it apply the principles of process change management to their IT operations, it still stops short in providing guidance on how to integrate IT functions into the business. This has made it easy for management to overlook the very real benefits contributed to the business by IT.

ITIL 3 helps resolves this issue. Rather than focusing on process, ITIL 3 focuses on service. It’s designed to incorporate the best practices of change management. A side benefit is that ITIL problem management process flow also becomes much more business centered in its scope.