Technical skills
What follows is what I can do because I have done it, not a list of keywords. Each entry also states what it is for in technical consultancy: a skill that does not translate into a question useful to a court has no value in this context.
-
Systems, networking and infrastructure
The core. Administration of Unix and Linux systems across the common distributions, automation through scripting, server architecture design, network and appliance configuration, network and mail services. In forensic work this is what tells you where a system records what it does, and how long it keeps it.
- Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS)
- Unix
- Bash scripting
- Apache
- NGINX
- TCP/IP and routing
- Firewalling
- Mail servers (Postfix, Mailcow, Zimbra)
- Docker
-
Cloud and managed services
Design and operation of cloud infrastructure, exposing and securing programming interfaces, service scalability. In data disputes it tells you what a provider records, where, and for how long.
- Google Cloud Platform
- Amazon Web Services
- API Gateway
- High-availability architectures
-
Databases
Design, tuning and operation of relational databases, including those under heavy load and complex real-time querying. This is what allows a lookup to be distinguished from a bulk extraction in a database log.
- MySQL and MariaDB
- PostgreSQL
- Oracle
- Query optimisation
- Migrations
-
Software development
Application and service development, programming interfaces, integration between heterogeneous systems. It is what allows other people's code to be read: in software supply disputes it is the difference between describing a program and understanding what it does.
- Python
- PHP
- Java
- JavaScript
- RESTful APIs
- JSON and XML
- Git and GitHub
-
Language-model based systems
End-to-end design of generative solutions: retrieval-augmented architectures, multi-agent systems, production lifecycle management through prototyping, testing, release and monitoring. This is the field where litigation is emerging now.
- RAG architectures
- Multi-agent systems
- Production lifecycle
- Model integration (Anthropic, Google, OpenAI)
- Evaluation and monitoring
-
Technical leadership
Leading multidisciplinary teams of systems engineers and developers, setting architectural standards and development practice, code review. In an instruction it means being able to deal with the parties' technical departments without depending on them.
- Technical team leadership
- Standard setting
- Code review
- Technical documentation
Languages
Italian, native. English, written and spoken at professional level: I read and draft technical documentation and can run an instruction with English-speaking counterparties or experts.
What I do not do
An equally useful list. I do not carry out investigative activity reserved to licensed agencies; I do not offer access to other people's devices or accounts; I do not handle data recovery from physically damaged media, which is a laboratory speciality distinct from mine; and I do not give legal advice, which is counsel's role. Where an instruction calls for one of these, I say so and, where I can, point to someone who does it.
Do you have a matter under way?
Tell me what happened and what you need to prove. In a first reply I will tell you whether there is a technical route, what data is needed and how long it takes — before any commitment.