About
The HeadInTheClouds.site project is a educational initiative of Kenneth G. Hartman in collaboration with the SANS Institute.
Kenneth G. Hartman owns Lucid Truth Technologies, a Michigan-based digital private investigation agency and forensic consulting firm specializing in computer, mobile, network, and cloud forensics. Ken is a Certified Instructor for the SANS Institute, teaching SEC510: Public Cloud Security: AWS, Azure, & GCP and SEC488: Cloud Security Essentials. Ken’s mission is to “make the truth clear,” and that is reflected in his teaching style and his approach to digital forensics. Ken has expertise in cloud technology with a career spanning various architecture, engineering, compliance, and security product management roles.
More About Ken
Ken has always been interested in technology and criminal investigation, influenced by his uncle, an engineering executive, and his father, a detective. Kenneth Hartman’s first criminal forensic case was the 2008 murder trial of Charles Curtis Merriman. The case was unique because the alleged victim’s body was never found. As a result, the case left a big impression on him regarding the importance of digital forensics.
From 2002-2011, Ken helped launch and lead a company called Visonex. Visonex is a nationwide electronic medical record for dialysis patients. Visonex was the first Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) medical record solution. Before joining Visonex as the first non-founding employee, Kenneth worked for ten years at Kraft Foods as an Industrial Controls Engineer and Electrical Systems Manager, working on PLCs and SCADA systems for well-known products like Lunchables® and Oscar Mayer®.
After Visonex, Kenneth worked at Shopbop.com (an Amazon subsidiary) and OneNeck IT Solutions (a mid-size cloud provider) in Madison, Wisconsin, before moving to Silicon Valley. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Ken worked for Google, SAP Ariba, and Illumina—all the while working on the side as a confidential expert consultant on various digital forensic cases. While Ken was at Google, he wrote a SANS GIAC Gold Paper called “BitTorrent & Digital Contraband,” which summarized much of what was known publicly at the time regarding the technology used to investigate criminals distributing child sexually abusive media (CSAM). For more information on Ken’s BitTorrent research, visit TorrentialDownpour.net.
While working as the leader of Illumina’s Cloud Security team, Ken helped develop and refine DFIR procedures for investigating security incidents on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) virtual machines. This research led to another SANS GIAC Gold Paper, “Digital Forensic Analysis of Amazon Linux EC2 Instances.” This paper was the first publicly available guidance providing detailed steps for incident responders dealing with Amazon Linux virtual machines. Since publishing that paper in the SANS Reading Room in January 2018, the information has been updated and is available at forensicate.cloud.
In 2019, Ken left Illumina and transitioned into full-time independent security consulting to have more control over the type of projects he works on and to enable ample time for teaching and security research. An area of research interest for Ken is how to use cloud technologies, DevOps, and data science to automate the eDiscovery and forensic analysis processes. In 2022, Kenneth G. Hartman rebranded his consulting company as “Lucid Truth Technologies” to best reflect his passion for using cutting-edge technologies to advance his mission to “make the truth clear.”
Ken holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Michigan Technological University and a master’s degree in Information Security Engineering from SANS Technology Institute. Ken has earned the CISSP, GCFA, GFCE, GWAPT, GCIH, GCIA, GSEC, GCCC, GCPM, as well as the GIAC Security Expert (GSE). Ken is also a Licensed PI in Michigan, as required by law to consult on criminal cases involving digital forensics.
Contact Ken
Email: kgh@kennethghartman.com
Personal Website: www.kennethghartman.com
Company Website: www.LucidTruthTechnologies.com
Twitter: @kennethghartman
Linkedin: /in/KennethGHartman