Heather Mahalik Barnhart

Senior Director of Community Engagement

Cellebrite

Heather Mahalik is the Senior Director of Community Engagement. She advises on strategic digital intelligence operations and educates both the public and industry professionals on the latest challenges in the space and how Cellebrite helps address them. For more than 18 years, Mahalik has worked on high-stress and high-profile cases,

investigating everything from child exploitation to Osama Bin Laden's digital media. She has helped law enforcement, eDiscovery firms, and the federal government extract and manually decode artifacts used in solving investigations around the world. Mahalik is the co-author of Practical Mobile Forensics, currently a best seller from Pack't Publishing and serves as a senior instructor, author and the course lead for FOR585: Smartphone Forensic Analysis In-Depth at the SANS Institute.

Presenting Digital Evidence that Holds up in Court
April 03, 2024
When juries hear a case, it’s imperative they can easily grasp a simple explanation of the chain of events. read more
How to Hunt Down Malware on Mobile Devices
March 18, 2024
No longer a question of if but when an attack is going to happen, there is a pertinent need for education in identification, resolution and bolstering defences against future attacks. read more
Collaboration Between Digital, Investigation Units is Key to Case Success
February 05, 2024
These examples underscore the need for collaboration across an investigation’s life cycle, so investigators and prosecutors have a full understanding of the evidence’s value to a case. read more
Closing Cases: The Crucial Role of Full File Systems in Law Enforcement Investigations
January 08, 2024
When every binary digit of evidence holds the potential to shape justice, there exists a hidden digital treasure chest capable of unravelling the most intricate of mysteries—it’s called the full file system (FFS). read more
How the Audit, Accreditation Process Strengthen Digital Evidence
December 16, 2022
When agencies begin or continue the process of auditing digital forensic workflows to obtain accreditation, the change process becomes more prominent—and concerns and negative feelings among officers and staff may also rise. read more
Push Tech to the Front Lines To Solve Cases Faster
November 23, 2022
The Digital Intelligence equipment and training that can shorten the time to solve crimes is often not in the hands of the people who first show up at crime scenes. read more
Why Storing Evidence in the Cloud is Safer, Faster and Better
October 28, 2022
If there’s the slightest hint that evidence has been accessed by unauthorized people, or tampered with in any way, a carefully constructed case against a suspect could end up tossed out of court. read more
The Future of Digital Forensics: The Good and the Bad
September 16, 2022
Even as encryption gets stronger and consumers embrace digital privacy protections, there are trends afoot that will help the good guys. read more
Digital Forensics 101: The Value of ‘Capture the Flag’ Events
August 19, 2022
“Capture the Flag” competitions offer a good opportunity to have a lot of fun and learn new cybersecurity and digital forensics skills, in a way that may not seem much like work at all. read more
Improving the Mental Health and Well-Being of Forensic Examiners
July 15, 2022
In the world of examiners, evidence of violent crimes, or crimes against children, offer visceral and painful images and messages that can be very hard to shake if we don’t take care of our mental health on an ongoing basis.\ read more
How to Access Digital Evidence that Doesn’t Demand Decryption
June 17, 2022
There is data available that doesn’t necessarily require overcoming encryption protection, which can help support evidence that’s obtained through other methods. read more
Why Access to Digital Evidence is Tougher than Ever, And What You Can Do About It
May 19, 2022
The difficulties of gaining access to digital evidence mean that law enforcement agencies must equip themselves with sophisticated technology for collecting and analyzing digital data. read more
Conducting Digital Forensics in the Field
April 15, 2022
Sometimes it may be necessary to engage in digital field forensics—that is, the collection and, if possible, viewing of digital evidence at the scene in order to make quick decisions about a person at risk, or about preventing future crimes. read more
Finding Digital Evidence in Wearable Tech
March 18, 2022
If wearables become essential equipment for a broader swath of the population, it stands to reason that law enforcement officers and digital forensic analysts will start finding wearables as they investigate crimes. read more
Isolating Devices to Preserve Evidence
February 18, 2022
By cutting off the device from its access “lifeline,” frontline officers and investigators can prevent existing digital evidence from changing, or even disappearing altogether. read more
How Digital Analysts Manage the Impact of Malware
February 04, 2022
Law enforcement agencies and digital forensics labs aren’t immune to the disruptive and dangerous effects of malware either. read more
Digital Forensics: Training Best Practices for Officers, Investigators
December 10, 2021
In a world where just about every suspect and witness has a digital device, cutting digital training eliminates an investment in people – and therefore, a force’s future. read more
Best Practices for Encrypted Devices
November 05, 2021
Consumers who buy and use today’s mobile phones want assurance that their personal data is secure – so vendors are responding with increasingly sophisticated data encryption. This hardened encryption is now a must-have for mobile devices, and not just a “nice-to-have.” read more
When You Think Digital Data is Gone Forever, All is Not Lost
October 08, 2021
What do you do when you know a crucial piece of digital evidence should be somewhere in a phone’s file, or in the Cloud, or in the social media account – yet it’s nowhere to be found? What are your options for finding that text message or photo? read more
Computer Forensics: What Can You Do About Deleted Data?
September 10, 2021
With digital intelligence technology combined with investigator smarts, some pieces of evidence that have been tampered with can be detected, after all. read more