Enfuse 2018 Reflection – Zach Burnham
Introduction:
This past summer, I had the honor of attending this year’s Enfuse Conference, the first iteration hosted by Opentext. As a rising senior at Champlain College, this opportunity fell at a critical time for me in my professional development. Attending allowed me to build on the knowledge I’ve gathered in my previous courses, and my time at the Leahy Center for Digital Investigation. Through conversations with some of the greatest minds currently in digital forensics and cybersecurity. Besides networking, the conference also allowed all attendees to sign up for an array of classes with pins you could collect from each class. This was aimed to help start conversations with others with the same interests who may have been walking by. One of the classes offered at the conferences this year covered a recent new interest of mine: artificial intelligence (AI).
Top Applications of AI & Machine Learning Session Review
There were two speakers for this session. The first was Alexis Mitchell, a Principal Data Scientists for Opentext with a background in HP, Recommind, and DARPA. The second speaker was Zachary Jarvinen, also from Opentext, who works in their Product Marketing department for Analytics & AI and has a background in Epson, tapClicks, and the United States Department of State. Together, they talked about the implementations of machine learning and AI in the real world. Their primary example was how Opentext’s Magellan and Business Intelligence help law enforcement and members of government do their jobs. They argued that the use of AI can “help connect, blend, and analyze any and all things” to help organize and expedite the use of information.
To my surprise, machine learning and AI can already found in governments around the world. The European Defense Ministry uses this technology to monitor irregularities in tax documents, and the Government of Canada for assisting employees with common searches and predicting where documents may belong. The Alberta Energy Regulator is also using machine learning for predictive pipeline maintenance; predicting possible points of failure before it becomes an incident not only saves lives, but to optimize water usage. Attending this session only reaffirmed my belief that the future will revolve heavily around both machine learning and AI. I believe that as more AI more innovations come to light, the world will continue to grow more efficient.
Conclusion:
If you are studying digital forensics or even have an interest in the field, I highly recommend this conference. This conference really opened my eyes to a world filled with professionals and topics I had never even though of doing before. Seeing how attendees and speakers interacted with one another exposed me to the idea of life post-graduation. Providing me with opportunities and connections to utilize as my network grows. My attendance has only reaffirmed my strong passion for digital forensics, and the benefits the industry’s work brings to the world.
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