How does one stay updated in this field when everything around is changing so fast? Earlier it was largely about disks and mostly phones if you are in LE. But now it is all so crowded with cloud, social media, encryption, AI tools, AI generated content and what not.

I get it that "by learning always" is the answer but I have started feeling it is very much impossible for forensics people to be proficient at everything. Proficient because you cant analyze something just with logs and like that if you dont know how it works at broader level. And its not like we are blessed with teams of 100s that we can have specialists per technology to handle different types of cases. Most forensic firms I can say have not more than 8-10 people. I didnt want to make this about tools but it seems inevitable not to talk about them in this context. Our entire industry is based upon not even handful of software vendors that I dont need to take names of. Sometimes software works, many a times not. Sprinkle it with the $$$$ yearly renewals, training, certifications, storage costs and such stuff. I came to think about this when someone posted yesterday that testimony on differentiating between unauthorised access to personal devices and today's post of searching for csam in haystack amount of data. What's our way out? What's the future how does one stay sharp?