About
Matthew Westwood-Hill
Founder and Principal, Cognisn. Digital forensics and incident response since 2003.
Founder and Principal, Cognisn. Digital forensics and incident response since 2003.
Matthew Westwood-Hill has worked in digital forensics, eDiscovery and incident response since 2003, from examining evidence for law enforcement to leading national response practices and the security functions of large organisations. Cognisn is his independent practice.
He has prepared expert reports and given evidence for more than ten years across hundreds of matters, in the Federal Court, state Supreme and District Courts, the Fair Work Commission and criminal matters, instructed by both sides and including concurrent evidence with opposing experts. He has led incident responses for multinational organisations, conducted more than a dozen negotiations with threat actors, and run security programmes against ISO 27001, SOC 2, the Essential Eight and NIST CSF.
Alongside that, he builds software. The tools he has written for evidence handling, large data sets and AI integration are published at github.com/Cognisn, and his talks and research are on the Research page.
Independent practice in expert evidence, forensic examination, eDiscovery, incident response leadership, threat actor negotiation, advisory and software.
Led the global security function, including ISO 27001 and SOC 2 programmes, privacy obligations across several countries, and incident command.
Led the security function of a national broadcaster: the cyber security strategy, Essential Eight and NIST maturity, and the engineering, operations, incident response and architecture teams.
Directed the team on large and complex forensic and breach response engagements, as engagement lead, and shaped the practice's processes and capability.
Led the Privacy and Cyber Response, Computer Forensic and eDiscovery practice for Oceania. Led responses to ransomware and intrusions for multinational clients in telecommunications, energy, industrial and government sectors, and originated a deep and dark web monitoring platform recognised in EY's global innovation programme.
Subject matter expert in Cyber Security and digital forensics, then architect and development lead for enterprise data discovery and collection products, working with clients nationally and internationally.
Led a technical team supporting litigation and eDiscovery for the firm's legal teams and clients, from case planning to working with review platforms and forensic providers.
Ran a digital forensics practice conducting computer forensic, eDiscovery and investigation work, with chain of custody and evidence handling built for presentation in court.
Computer forensic examination alongside training in questioned document and handwriting examination, assisting law enforcement in recovering evidence.
He has spoken at national and international conferences on forensics, eDiscovery and Cyber Security, and has been interviewed for television news on hacking and data breaches. His most recent talks, both at the Australian Cyber Conference 2026 in Melbourne, are published in full: