2020 was for sure an unusual year that tested our adaptability. Despite the challenges and disruptions of the past 9 months, we look back at this time with a sense of accomplishment and gratitude to our customers, partners and teammates, for continued support and cooperation. Atola’s 2020 was a year to remember!
RAID Support in TaskForce
TaskForce has become the first hardware RAID imager in the world!
With its 18 ports, TaskForce has an unprecedented capability to reassemble RAID arrays. But we went a huge step further: Atola introduced the automation of the RAID configuration search, and it is the breakthrough the forensic industry has been waiting for.
Now, if a RAID with an unknown configuration lands on your desk, you don’t have to spend hours (or days!) looking for the right configuration. TaskForce will do it automatically in minutes. We have already supported:
- RAID 0, 1, 5, and JBOD, including imaging of RAID 5 wth errors or a missing RAID member.
- Partition preview works with NTFS and ext4/3/2 file systems.
And more RAID types and file systems are coming in the upcoming releases.
Imaging into a file on an encrypted target with TaskForce
Atola TaskForce creates an encrypted exFAT partition using VeraCrypt with a 256-bit AES algorithm on the target drive, which the user locks with a password. This way you make your Storage drive encrypted. All image files remain safe and protected during evidence preservation or transfer.
Continued TaskForce integration into Magnet AUTOMATE
Firmware releases 2020.1 and 2020.2 further enhanced TaskForce integration in Magnet AUTOMATE. For instance, new parameters were added to the Web API command set to improve communication between the tools.
Please read this real case timeline comparison by Aaron Sparling from the Portland Police Bureau that shows how Magnet AUTOMATE in combination with Atola TaskForce can save your time and help you reduce backlogs in your lab.
More updates to Atola Insight Forensic
We enhanced Insight with broader SAS drive support in May. In addition, the January software release will bring the support of AFF4!
New team members (and more are expected)
We never stop growing and welcomed Yuliia and Igor to the team in March. Igor brought his international experience building military-grade equipment. He immediately enhanced our hardware development team with his unique skillset. In her turn, Yuliia has demonstrated an impressive learning curve since joining us as a QA engineer. This is her first job in software development, and we are happy to have taken the risk: she has become a valuable asset to Atola!
Of course, we can’t wait for the social distancing requirements to be over to invite more talent!
Atola Virtual Booth
This year we went above and beyond to keep conversations with the industry players going. In May, we set up a virtual booth to facilitate communication in the absence of face-to-face meetings and events. The booth ran every week through December. As a result, we had dozens of exciting conversations with our friends, partners and customers.
After just a few conferences at the start of the season, we all watched digital forensics events get canceled or moved online. Certainly, we would like to thank the organizers of the online events for creating these opportunities to share knowledge and exchange ideas through online presentations and online booths. Let’s hope for offline events to return in 2021 and meeting each other there!
We get it. It has been a year like no other
With the team doing our best to stay focused on the result, we experimented the first few months of complete uncertainty. Throughout that time, we tried and tested different communication methods to coordinate our efforts and to be present for each other.
As this year is coming to an end, we are all back at the mothership, doubling down on our efforts to bring you more great solutions in 2021!
Thank you!
Overall, 2020 was a good year for us as a company and we are grateful for finishing it stronger and with a sense of optimism.
The Atola team wishes you peace, joy and prosperity throughout the coming year. Thank you for your commitment in 2020 to keep things running and improving no matter what. We look forward to working with you in 2021.
Let’s make it a great one!
Yulia believes that with a product that is exceptionally good at solving tasks of forensic experts, marketing is about explaining its capabilities to the users. Yulia regularly represents Atola at DFIR events, holds free workshops and webinars about Atola imagers functionality and advocates on the users' behalf to ensure that Atola keeps on adding value and raising the bar for the industry.
- Top digital forensic conferences in 2024 - January 1, 2024
- 2023. Year in Review - December 31, 2023
- Top digital forensics conferences in 2023 - January 1, 2023
Yulia Samoteykina
Director of Marketing Yulia believes that with a product that is exceptionally good at solving tasks of forensic experts, marketing is about explaining its capabilities to the users. Yulia regularly represents Atola at DFIR events, holds free workshops and webinars about Atola imagers functionality and advocates on the users' behalf to ensure that Atola keeps on adding value and raising the bar for the industry.
