Forensic IT recruits Chris Hatfield as executive general manager
Forensic IT, a subsidiary of cybersecurity consulting and services firm Infotrust, has recruited former FTI Consulting managing director Chris Hatfield as its new executive general manager.
Chris Hatfield joins Forensic IT in Sydney after spending the past decade at FTI Consulting in Australia and the UK, before which he also spent time with Alvarez & Marsal in London and at PwC’s local acquisition PPB Advisory.
Established in 2013, Forensic IT serves as a specialist digital forensics & incident response (DFIR) arm of ASX-listed cybersecurity consultancy and services firm Infotrust, which has a team of more than 250 professionals nationwide.
“Cyber incidents now sit squarely at the intersection of technology, law, and governance,” commented Infotrust managing director and group CEO Julian Challingsworth. “Chris brings global forensic experience and the executive‑level judgement needed to help boards and legal teams navigate high‑pressure, high‑stakes situations with confidence.”
A former member of the Kent police force, Hatfield has spent the past two decades in IT forensics in the consulting industry, including establishing the practice for Australian restructuring & insolvency advisory PPB. Returning to the UK, he then spent time at Alvarez & Marsal before joining FTI Consulting in 2015 and relocating downunder again four years later.
Made a managing director in 2020, Hatfield has since regularly featured in the digital & data category on Who’s Who Legal’s list of the world’s leading experts and practitioners, having advised a wide range of stakeholders across multiple industries and jurisdictions on both legal and dispute matters as well as the technical and strategic application of technology solutions.
“Cyber incidents today are rarely confined to information technology teams,” Hatfield said upon crossing to Forensic IT. “They quickly involve executive leadership, legal counsel, regulators and, in many cases, the courts. Organisations need forensic capabilities that are technically rigorous, legally defensible, and aligned with executive decision-making.”
Cybersecurity capabilities
He further described his new role as “particularly compelling” due to Infotrust’s broad range of cybersecurity capabilities being housed together with forensics, such that the firm isn’t just responding to incidents but “helping organisations to prevent them, detect them early, and strengthen their control environments long before something actually goes wrong.”
According to the firm, Forensic IT would continue to expand its national DFIR capabilities under Hatfield while driving further integration with Infotrust, which was acquired by Spirit Technology Solutions in 2024 shortly before it also picked up Forensic IT, with Spirit last year opting to forge ahead under the Infotrust brand and sell off of its cloud consulting arm Nextgen.
Meanwhile, Challingsworth was brought in by Spirit in 2022 with a long history of M&A activity behind him, including as CEO of local cybersecurity firm Tesserent ahead of its $176 million sale to Thales. Earlier he was a partner at management consultancy Litmus Group, which then joined PPB and was later sold to PwC, with many of his former senior colleagues now at Teneo.
