DFIR Related Events for Beginners – April, 2020

A list of Digital Forensics and Incident Response related events and training that may be of interest to students/beginners for the month of April.

As a result of the idea to make a monthly list of DFIR related events for beginners just now popping into my head, the April edition is for the end of April. I will start doing this at the beginning of each month.


April 20, 2020: NW3C Capture The Flag Challenge. “The competition will run from Monday, April 20th 2:00 PM EDT (6:00 PM UTC) until Saturday, May 2nd 1:59 PM EDT (5:59 PM UTC).  The user who achieves the highest point total during the two week competition will be crowned the victor!” You can register here: https://nw3.ctfd.io/


April 21, 2020: SANS is holding a free webcast on how to get into the DFIR field. You can register here: sans.org/webcasts/securing-future-dfir-113305


April 21, 2020: Registration for the Corelight online CTF opened up with dates starting on April 21st. You can register here: https://www3.corelight.com/l/420832/2020-03-31/lcxk2q


April 23-24, 2020: SANS is having a Virtual DFIR NetWars Tournament for people who registered for SANS training in March and April. To register, log into your SANS account and select “You are eligible to participate in an upcoming NetWars” at the top of your dashboard. 


April 25, 2020: Intro Sec Con is a free virtual conference to “teach fundamental and introductory information security skills” There is a great lineup of talks including talks on reverse engineering for CTFs, SOCs, and Linux.

Track 1: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/8318696474608280845

Track 2: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/1024042655494166031


Cynet is hosting an Incident Response CTF. You can register here: https://incident-response-challenge.com/


The Splunk Boss of the SOC Blue Team CTF opened up for anyone to play. You can register here: https://www.cyberdefenders.org/community/?register


Foxton Forensics has a CTF that started on April 10th. There is still time to register and play. You can register here: https://challenges.foxtonforensics.com/


Basis Technology is offering free Autopsy digital forensics software training until May 15th. You can register here: https://www.autopsy.com/support/training/covid-19-free-autopsy-training/


Access Data is offering free training on FTK and Quin-C/QView. For more information, go here: https://accessdata.com/training


Pentester Academy has free CTF exercises that include digital forensics and reverse engineering. You can register at: https://www.ctf.live/


Pluralsight is free for the month of April. I highly recommend Josh Stroschein’s malware analysis and reverse engineering courses. There are also courses on digital forensics and incident response.


EC-Council Code Red is currently offering a free 30-day access pass. They have courses in Digital Forensics and Incident Response.


David Cowen has weekly “Sunday Funday” forensic challenges. He also hosts the Forensic Lunch Test Kitchen live on YouTube where you can learn about different forensic tools and chat with forensic professionals. Subscribe to his YouTube channel Learn Forensics With David Cowen.


There is also a regularly updated list of free DFIR related training courses on the training page of this site.