David Cowen

David joins CRA with over 25 years of digital forensics, information security, and cyber incident response experience – helping clients identify and protect their most valuable information and responding to allegations of trade secret theft and cyber incidents. He has extensive experience testifying since 2002 on behalf of plaintiffs and defendants on theft of trade secret cases and on a range of other digital forensic subjects including software piracy, insider trading, and electronic document authenticity issues.

Prior to joining CRA, David co-founded and led a digital forensics and cyber incident response consulting business for over 14 years until he and his colleagues were acquired by a Big Four accounting firm. For the past three years, David served as a leader within that firm’s cyber incident response practice, where he led the response to one of most massive and consequential cyber breaches in history, which resulted in sanctions being imposed by the US government on numerous foreign intelligence officials.

David is a recognized thought leader; a frequently requested speaker; an author of numerous articles, white papers, and five books on digital forensics; and a SANS-certified instructor. David is the lead author of the SANS FOR509: Enterprise Cloud Forensics class. David is the host of The Forensic Lunch, a popular digital forensics and incident response podcast and live YouTube show. David holds a patent in Digital Forensics for NTFS File system journaling forensics. He is a seven-time Forensic 4cast award winner for Digital Forensic Article of the Year, Digital Forensic Show of the Year, and Digital Forensic Blog of the Year. David has just completed his 16th year as the red team leader for the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition.

David holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Dallas, as well as the CCP, CISSP, CCFP, GCFE, and ACE certifications.