Cindy Murphy

Overview

Cindy Murphy is a digital forensics expert who spent 31 years in law enforcement, including about 25 years with the Madison, Wisconsin, Police Department, where she worked as a detective and forensic examiner. She began working with computer evidence in the late 1990s and later focused on cell phones. She earned a master’s degree in forensic computing and cybercrime investigation from University College Dublin in 2011, and she has taught digital forensics since 2002. She co-wrote an advanced smartphone forensics course for the SANS Institute, a cybersecurity training organization, and has testified as an expert in state and federal courts. In 2016, she co-founded Gillware Digital Forensics, a lab in Madison that was renamed Tetra Defense in 2020, and she led it as president.

Why She Matters

Cindy Murphy showed that digital forensics can start inside a police department and grow into teaching, research, and lab management. She focused on phones as they became one of the biggest sources of digital evidence, and she helped train other examiners to handle them carefully. Through her SANS courses, she has taught these methods to investigators worldwide. She has also worked to bring more girls into technology, including through Girl Tech, a STEM program for middle school girls at Madison College. For anyone who likes technology and wants to find answers, her career shows that a path into digital forensics can start with on-the-job learning and never stopping.