Angus M Marshall

Angus M Marshall

 BSc PhD CEng FBCS CITP FRSA

Angus started his career in academia and has worked at the University of Abertay Dundee, Humberside University, The University of Hull Centre for Internet Computing (CIC),Teesside University and the University of York.

During his time at CIC he was responsible for the centre's laboratory, servers and network systems and was called on to investigate and prevent hacking attempts. This led to an interest in the investigation of Internet-related activities.

Following a presentation at a Forensic Science Society conference, he was invited to register as an expert adviser with the National Crime Faculty and shortly thereafter, in 2001, was called on to assist with a missing person enquiry which turned out to be a murder investigation. The judge commended his evidence in that trial remarking that the use of timeline analysis and the retrieval of material from the accused's web browser proved highly significant.

At Teesside, he established and led the portfolio of Digital Forensics and Forensic Computing programmes at BSc and MSc level, and also led an EPSRC-funded project on CyberProfiling in conjunction with colleagues at the Universities of Hull and Sheffield.

He now acts as an independent consultant in all aspect of digital evidence and is registered with the National Crime Agency as an expert adviser. He is regularly called on to assist law-enforcement agencies with the development of methods for the extraction and interpretation of data from new or unusual sources of evidence.

Angus has experience of criminal casework, ranging from fraud through child abuse to murder and terrorism, as well as civil cases relating to former employees' misusing improperly acquired data, and has experience of producing reports and giving evidence in Scotland and England for both prosecution and defence. Although he avoids describing himself as an expert witness, he has given expert testimony in many cases.

From 2012 to 2015 he was also the UK's Principal Expert on Digital Evidence at ISO/IEC JTC1 SC27 meetings (the information security standards committee) and led the development of the ISO/IEC 27041 and 27042 standards for incident investigations. He also contributed to the development of the related ISO/IEC 27037 and 27043 standards and was one of the initiators of the ISO/IEC 27050 eDiscovery standards work. He continues to be a member of BSI's IST/033 committee on Information Security and acts as that body's national principal expert on digital evidence when required.

He has always retained links to academia and has been an external examiner for the MSc in Forensic Computing offered by the Centre for Forensic Computing at Cranfield, a visiting lecturer at De Montfort University's CyberSecurity Centre and is currently a visiting fellow at the Open University where he assisted with and advised on development of distance learning courses and research projects. In 2016 he joined the CyberSecurity team at York University as a Lecturer specialising in digital forensics.

As a contributor to, and member of the editorial board of, Digital Forensics Magazine his IRQ column is intended to spark debate and he is also a member of the editorial board for Elsevier's Digital Investigation journal.

Current activities include establishing the Digital Evidence Virtual Centre of Excellence, a Community Interest Company which aims to provide a co-ordinated single point of contact for research and development across the whole of the UK, and participating in the KTN's Forensic Science Special Interest Group for whom he produced the Digital Forensics Capability Analysis report in 2013.

He was a member of the Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences' accreditation sub-committee, where he was an approved assessor for the Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences (CSFS) University Accreditation Scheme, and led the development of the Society's component standards for digital forensics.

He was the Society's representative on the Forensic Science Regulator's working group on digital evidence, and so has a good insight into how ISO 17025 can and should be applied to digital forensics.

In February 2023 he was awarded a PhD by publication, by the University of York, for his work "Digital Evidence Regulation - an assessment of underlying issues in England and Wales" which highlights ongoing problems with the implementation and interpretation of regulatory standards.

Finally, he is a member of the Crime Writers' Association and occasionally advises and assists other members with technical details for their writing. Most notable amongst those who have consulted him is Val McDermid, who interviewed him for her non-fiction book "Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime".

Details of his publications can be found on ResearchGate and some of his media (radio and TV) work is listed on IMDB.