Phillip Russo
Advisory Consultant for Digital Forensics

CFE, Post grad in IT Security,
Certified Forensic ProDiscover Examiner

Phillip is an ex law enforcement officer within the Western Australian Police Service with almost 17 years of investigational experience, including being a forensic investigator and training officer within the Computer Crime Squad. During this time he has had papers published and delivered within international computer security forums including Moscow and New York, and presented at the Information Security Summit in Hong Kong in November 2006 and recently at the CSI Fraud conference, Kuala Lumpur Malaysia in November 2007.

After moving on from his Police career he has been responsible for building one of Australia's first banking forensic capabilities for Halifax Bank of Scotland Australia HBOSA and chaired the incident response team within one of Australia's leading banks "Bankwest", dealing with issues pertaining to online fraud including phishing and trojan attacks aimed at the Australian banking communities.

For over the past 7 years now Phillip has been instructing many It Professionals in the art of computer forensics, and has been employed by Guidance software: Encase and the AccessData Forensic Tool Kit.

Due to his training experience with AccessData his Australian training qualifications and experiences as a police academy instructor, he has been called upon by the Australian High-tech Crime Unit AHTCU, Australian federal and state police, Australian Defense, world leading banks and multi national companies including the big four to train and develop their staff within the area of computer forensics.

In Nov 2006 he played an integral part of a nationally significant case involving the first person charged under the new cyber crime legislation. The Australian Federal Police and the Commonwealth Department of Public Prosecutions engaged Phillip as their computer forensic expert witness. The defence had initially entered a plea of not guilty to 16 charges however after the evidence from Phillip's investigations was presented to the court the defense changed their plea to guilty to all 16 charges.

Phillip has just completed a number of extended tours of the UK , USA and Australia , delivering training and expert advice to companies and law enforcement agencies including Scotland Yard, US Homeland Security , ICE Immigration Customs Enforcement , Boeing the Australian Federal Police and many other agencies and corporate entities. Phillip was also given the honor of delivering training at a number of the FBI’s RCFL (Regional Computer Forensics Labs) during his USA trips. Since his first trip Phillip has been requested to attend and deliver other training in the USA for both law enforcement and corporate entities.
In November 2007 Phillip was requested to attend and speak the CSI Worldwide ACFE Fraud conference in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. Phillip has already been requested to return again in 2008 for the next conference.

In January 2008 Phillip delivered the first of his new courses focusing on a practical digital evidence gathering course, this was delivered in Singapore to over 20 Participants at the SMA involving corporate law enforcement and government entities.

In February 2008 Phillip attended New York City USA and Washington DC and completed his Forensic ProDiscover Certified Examiners Examination. It was also here that he and Mr Anthony Reyes of ARC www.arcgroupny.com Wall st Manhattan New York , formed a strategic partnership permitting both companies to offer forensic services on a worldwide scale covering Australia USA South America and Asia.

Mr. Russo holds a number of It security and Forensics credentials including being a Certified Fraud Examiner, holding a post graduate degree in IT Security from Edith Cowan Australian University and is completing his Masters of Digital forensics through ECU as well as a Gold status GIAC GSEC With SANS. He is also on the CSI board of governors and is actively engaged by many first class organizations to deliver the world’s best practices in all areas of forensics and IT Security worldwide.