Peter Sommer

Peter Sommer combines academic and public policy work with commercial cyber security consultancy, with a strong bias towards legal issues. He has acted as a digital forensic expert in many important criminal and civil court proceedings in the UK and international courts, usually where digital evidence has been an issue including Official Secrets, terrorism, state corruption, global hacking, DDoS attacks, murder, corporate fraud, privacy, defamation, breach of contract, website theft, IP piracy, professional regulatory proceedings, harassment, allegations against the UK military in Iraq and child sexual abuse. Particular themes have been situations where technologies need to be interpreted in legal terms and assessments of quantum and extent of damage.

His first degree is in law, from Oxford University. Until 2011 he was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Management at the London School of Economics. He is currently Professor of Digital Forensics at Birmingham City University, a Visiting Professor at De Montfort University Cyber Security Centre and lectures and examines at other universities. He has been a specialist advisor to Select Committees in the UK Houses of Lords and Commons on Investigatory Powers and on Electronic Commerce. He has given evidence to the Home Affairs and Science & Technology Select Committees, the the Joint Committee on the Communications Data Bill and to the Intelligence and Security Committee. He has consulted for OECD, UN, European Commission, UK Cabinet Office Scientific Advisory Panel on Emergency Response, UK National Audit Office, Audit Commission, and the Home Office.

During its existence he was the joint lead assessor for the digital speciality at the Home Office-sponsored Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners has advised the UK Forensic Science Regulator, the Dutch NRGD and the US DoJ.

He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Under the pseudonym Hugo Cornwall he is the author of The Hacker's Handbook, DataTheft and the Industrial Espionage Handbook - all often available second-hand on Amazon