Sandline’s Newsletter: October 2026- What’s New?
🎃 Happy Halloween from Sandline!
It’s spooky season! This month, we’re diving into deception, mysteries, and stories where things aren’t quite what they seem. Whether you’re looking for a last-minute Halloween costume or something to keep you entertained long after the trick-or-treaters have gone home, we’ve got you covered.
📖 THE READ
The Witch | Freida McFadden
Just released in October, this haunting psychological thriller follows a woman who returns to her family’s centuries-old Massachusetts estate, only to uncover disturbing secrets tied to the Salem witch trials. With mysterious voices, unexplained occurrences, and a family history that refuses to stay buried, it’s a fittingly creepy read for Halloween.
📺 THE WATCH
You Can See Everything | A24
Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim turn their cameras on Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes in this fascinating new documentary, filmed during the final weeks before she reported to prison. Part psychological experiment, part character study, the film explores the blurry lines between truth, performance, and perception.
Bonus Halloween costume idea: Channel Nathan Fielder with a navy sweater, a pair of inexpensive black headphones, and your most awkwardly serious expression. For couples, add an Elizabeth Holmes in a black turtleneck. It’s the ultimate niche 2026 Halloween costume.
🎧 THE LISTEN
“You Can See Everything” and the Nathan Fielder Effect | The New Yorker’s Critics at Large
For those who can’t get enough of Nathan Fielder’s peculiar brand of psychological experimentation, this October episode explores his latest documentary and the bigger questions it raises about truth, authenticity, and whether we can ever really know another person.
Case Study: Custom eDiscovery development for modern and emerging data.
The Summary
Law firms and corporate legal teams turn to Sandline as one of the only eDiscovery vendors in the market with a custom development team for modern data and emerging data. In one week, Sandline built a defensible forensic collection and conversion solution for four engineering and product platforms, turning complex data into review-ready content for litigation support.
The Challenge
A client needed a complete forensic collection from Azure DevOps, Jira, Confluence, and Aha.io. The scope included code repositories, build pipelines, complete commit histories, tickets, comments, revision histories, attachments, wiki pages, and product roadmaps.
These platforms were built for engineering and product work, not eDiscovery. Their data was distributed across APIs and connected through parent-child relationships and threaded discussions. No off-the-shelf eDiscovery tool could collect and prepare everything end to end, and the matter required a defensible result on a tight timeline.
The client also requested a PDF view of each item as it appeared in the source platform. Web captures could not show all relevant details, comments, history, and metadata together, leaving the resulting captures incomplete.
A Consultative, Custom-Built Response
Sandline brought its forensic, eDiscovery, and development teams together to understand the collection requirements and how the information needed to be reviewed. The development team-built API-based integrations for all four platforms in one week.
The integrations captured tickets, comments, revisions, attachments, and metadata while preserving parent-child relationships and discussion threads as they existed in the source. Repositories, pipelines, and commit histories were exported in fully searchable text formats. Tickets and wiki pages were converted into readable text files, with details, comments, revisions, and attachments clearly organized.
From Source Data to Review-Ready Documents
To meet the PDF requirement, Sandline engineered a custom generator that rebuilt each item from the collected data into one complete, reviewable document. This brought the item’s available details and history together in a consistent format, addressing the gaps left by screenshots and web captures.
Sandline also generated Relativity-native .dat load files with delimiter support to link families, threads, and metadata. Separate metadata files were prepared to overlay directly onto the PDFs in Relativity.
Defensible Collection and Delivery
The collection used read-only access. Sandline hashed every file, logged each action, and reconciled the collection against the source. These controls documented the work from collection through delivery and supported a defensible chain of custody.
The Result
The client received review-ready data within one week, without reformatting or cleanup. Reviewers could work with familiar, readable documents without needing technical knowledge of DevOps or Jira. Families and threads remained intact in Relativity, and full-text search extended across the engineering and product history.
The engagement also produced a repeatable framework for similar matters. When modern or emerging data does not fit a standard eDiscovery workflow, Sandline works with clients to develop a practical solution around the matter’s technical and evidentiary requirements.
Blog: Forensics Summit Recap Last week, Sandline Global hosted our 3rd Annual Forensics Summit!
This year, we brought the Summit to our Washington, D.C. office, bringing together our entire US-based Forensics team, our international examiners Jerome Yueng and Maggie Chung, and our colleagues from the DC office for two days of collaboration, knowledge sharing, and professional development.
As a team that operates across multiple offices, time zones, and continents, opportunities to come together in person are especially valuable.
The Summit has become an annual tradition that allows us to share what we’ve learned over the past year, explore emerging technologies, and continue investing in the people and capabilities that make our practice successful.
We had a fantastic lineup of presentations this year:
Gary Hunt kicked things off with a look back at the past year, highlighting the team’s continued growth, technical development, and strategic collaborations across the broader Sandline organization.
Sebastian Caballero and Ana Gomerez explored the challenges of Business Email Compromise (BEC) investigations and broader Incident Response considerations, sharing insights into an increasingly important area of digital forensics.
Paula Viall, Jordyn Morris, and Anna Albraccio delivered technical deep dives into specialized forensic workflows, showcasing the expertise, creativity, and problem-solving that go into navigating complex collections, data conversions, investigations.
Gary Hunt and Jesus Ramos closed out the presentations with a discussion on Artificial Intelligence, exploring both its practical applications in our day-to-day workflows and the opportunities and challenges of leveraging AI in forensic investigations.
While the technical sessions are a major part of the Summit, the value extends well beyond the presentations. It’s an opportunity for our examiners to learn from one another, challenge existing approaches, exchange ideas, and strengthen the relationships that make collaboration possible across a geographically distributed team.
Digital forensics is an industry that never stands still. New technologies, evolving data sources, increasingly complex investigations, and emerging tools continually challenge us to adapt. Events like this help ensure we’re not just keeping pace with those changes but actively thinking about how to improve the way we work.
We’re incredibly proud of the team we’ve built and the expertise, curiosity, and enthusiasm everyone brings to the table. A huge thank you to everyone who presented, participated, traveled to DC, and helped make this year’s Summit a success.
We wrapped up with a team outing to the Maryland Renaissance Faire, where we had front-row seats for jousting and cheered on one of our own as she took on the rock wall challenge.
Already looking forward to what we accomplish together over the next year, and to Summit #4!
25th Annual Energy Litigation Conference Nov 10- Houston, TX