Company name: Magnet Forensics
Headquarters: Herndon, Va.
Signature Product: Magnet Graykey
Website: https://www.magnetforensics.com/
1. Where did your company originate from?
Magnet Forensics was born both out of necessity and humble roots. Working as a frontline police officer in Canada, Jad Saliba’s duties shifted to the digital forensic unit – where the lack of digital investigation options available soon became obvious. With Jad’s problem-solving nature taking over, he decided to create the tools needed to properly take on the challenges of digital evidence in criminal investigations. These tools proved so useful to law enforcement that Jad recognized an opportunity to do more for the pursuit of justice globally if he devoted himself to software development.
In 2011, he left policing to launch Magnet Forensics with Adam Belsher, who was fresh off an accomplished role as a leading executive at Research In Motion, helping bring the BlackBerry to millions of users around the world.
In 2016, David Miles, Braden Thomas, Justin Fisher and Sean Larsson were galvanized by a recent terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., and the subsequent difficulties in extracting data from the suspect’s iPhone. Out of this came Grayshift and the creation of Graykey – an innovative tool that helped investigators access unprecedented amounts of digital evidence from iOS devices and, after continual evolution, Android devices.
After several years of serving the digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) community, Magnet Forensics and Grayshift came together under the Magnet Forensics name in 2023, providing an incredibly extensive digital investigation portfolio. Organizations around the world can count on their solutions to extract, analyze, and report on digital evidence in the most comprehensive and user-friendly way possible.
2. What is your signature product and how does it work?
Magnet Graykey provides same-day access to the latest iOS and Android devices – often in under one hour. From there, the data goes into Magnet Axiom (along with other any other mobile, cloud, computer and vehicle data) for examination in one case file. Users have powerful and intuitive analytical tools to automatically surface case-relevant evidence quickly. They’re brought together under Magnet One, a connected end-to-end platform that makes sense of the overwhelming amount of digital data and creates greater efficiency across the entire digital investigation lifecycle.
3. Why do you believe your products are essential to the police community?
Magnet Forensics solutions have been built with speed, ease-of-use and reliability at their core.
With our mission to unlock the truth and protect the innocent, we’re demonstrating that we know that time is always of the essence, but, also just as importantly, that getting to the truth is non-negotiable. The more reliable and expedient the information, the quicker justice can be achieved.
4. What has been the biggest challenge your company has faced?
The constantly evolving capabilities of technology is the challenge that we’re always fighting against. Our guard can never go down because we need to ensure we’re ahead of criminals at all times.
5. What makes your company unique?
Our commitment to listening to our customers and truly being a partner alongside them. We build our products to truly make their work easier because their work is so vital to society.
6. What do your customers like best about you and your products?
The ease of use, the amount of data that can be found, and, in the case of those who work in Internet Crimes Against Children, the officer wellness features we’ve put into our products to ensure that they’re preserving their mental wellbeing. We also take customer feedback seriously and are constantly iterating on our solutions to ensure that they are meeting customer needs, especially as their workflows evolve.
7. What is the most rewarding part of serving the first responder community?
Knowing that we’re making it easier for anyone in public safety to help their communities drives us every day. Utilizing our expertise to help them make a difference is a special opportunity as well as an extreme honor – and we don’t take that lightly.
8. Do you support any charitable organizations within the public safety or your community? Tell us more.
Magnet Forensics finds ways to give back in any way we can. Whether it’s our partnerships with organization like Child Rescue Coalition or donations to other chartable organizations. We also run two other charitable initiatives in the space: the Magnet Forensics Scholarship Program, which awards free and extensive training to promising officers, and The Auxtera Project, which we created to improve access to justice by donating digital forensics tools and connecting volunteered technical services from trained professionals to those in need – including police agencies, public defenders, charities and not-for-profits.
We also offer a grant assistance program to help our customers write effective grant proposals if they are struggling to get the funding they need to purchase Magnet Forensics products.
9. Is there any fun fact or trivia that you’d like to share about you or your company?
The earliest version of our software was named after our founder, Jad Saliba, and was thus, Jadsoftware. Jad just had the drive to help and made the product for free to help other agencies. Eventually, it became so popular that he set his sights bigger and that’s where the roots of Magnet Forensics comes from.
10. What’s next for your company? Any upcoming new projects or initiatives?
Right now, the biggest focus we have as a company is the development of Magnet One, which is an end-to-end platform that will empower users to close cases faster and truly revolutionize the pursuit of justice. Magnet One unites your digital forensics solutions and teams across your entire workflow for faster investigations.