Brian Carrier (@carrier4n6) is the Vice President of Digital Forensics at Basis Technology, a software company specializing in applying artificial intelligence techniques to understanding documents and unstructured data written in different languages. In this lightning talk, Brian gives an overview of his experiences in using and designing open source security tools.

Brian begins his talk with a little about his experience in security, and how security tools were very limited early on. When Brian was still a student, Dan Farmer and Wieste Venema released The Coroner’s Toolkit (TCT), and from there, Brian built on top of that to deliver a more friendly user experience, resulting in Autopsy. He then discusses the evolution of digital forensics, moving from individual tools to platform-based tools.

This talk zeroes in on the importance of the user experience in digital security and how the security space is constantly evolving. Brian focuses on the importance of extensibility in the security space, and gives real-world examples of how improving the design of security tools leads to more users.