Hamza Aytaç Doğanay: Founder, Digital Forensics Expert, and Architect of the KAOS Domestic AI Engine

"Trust in evidence is trust in justice."

This sentence is not merely DSET's brand promise. It is the summary of Hamza Aytaç Doğanay's field career spanning more than two decades. It is the compass of a professional journey that began in law enforcement, deepened in academia, earned global recognition in the private sector, and today extends all the way to domestic artificial intelligence architecture.

This page documents the professional biography, areas of expertise, academic output, and the mark left on Turkey's digital justice ecosystem by Hamza Aytaç Doğanay, founder, CEO, and Chief Digital Forensics Expert of DSET.

Brief Profile

Field Information
Full Name Hamza Aytaç Doğanay
Position DSET Founder, CEO, Chief Digital Forensics Expert
Year Founded 2003
Location Hacettepe University Teknokent, Ankara
Academic Ankara Üniversitesi (Ankara University) MSc in Forensic Informatics (thesis-based)
Undergraduate Polis Akademisi (Police Academy) (2004)
PhD Gazi Üniversitesi (Gazi University), Information Security Engineering (ongoing)
Academic Title Ankara University IT Department, Lecturer
International Advisory Council of Europe Cybercrime Programme Office (C-PROC)
Public Service Background General Directorate of Security, Cybercrime Combat Department (6 years)
International Award ACELab Greatest Data Recovery 2023, Socially Significant Data Recovery Recognition
Expertise Digital forensics, data recovery, mobile evidence, expert witness reporting, KAOS domestic AI engine architecture
LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/hamzaaytacdoganay

1. Who Is He? Hamza Aytaç Doğanay in One Sentence

Hamza Aytaç Doğanay is among the figures who transformed the laboratory-standard handling of digital evidence in Turkey from an individual practice into an institutional discipline. He is also the founder, CEO, and Chief Digital Forensics Expert of DSET (Hacettepe Teknokent, Ankara). Since 2003, under the DSET umbrella, he has worked in data recovery, digital forensics, expert witness opinions, and, in recent years, domestic AI-based security (KAOS).

What sets him apart from many of his peers in this field is that he is simultaneously proficient on three different fronts:

  1. The field: He worked on real cases within the cybercrime combat unit of the police organization.
  2. Academia: He completed a thesis-based master's degree at Ankara University and produced peer-reviewed publications.
  3. Industry: He founded DSET and led the data recovery case showcased worldwide by ACELab in 2023.

This three-way foundation is the reason his reports are of a quality that can be cited in court, in a technical laboratory, and in an academic journal alike.

2. Academic Identity

2.1 Undergraduate: Polis Akademisi (Police Academy) (2004)

Hamza Aytaç Doğanay's academic roots begin with the undergraduate education he completed at the Polis Akademisi (Police Academy) in 2004. This education laid the academic foundation for the 6 years he later spent at the General Directorate of Security's Cybercrime Combat Department. The Police Academy's emphasis on discipline and chain of custody is also the mental groundwork for the ISO/IEC 27037 methodology that DSET applies in its laboratory processes today.

2.1b PhD: Gazi Üniversitesi (Gazi University) Information Security Engineering (Ongoing)

Hamza Aytaç Doğanay continues his academic career at the doctoral level in the Gazi Üniversitesi (Gazi University) Information Security Engineering program. His ongoing doctoral work proceeds directly in parallel with the theoretical foundation of the KAOS domestic AI engine.

2.1c Lecturer at Ankara University

Today he serves as a Lecturer within the Ankara University IT Department. There he provides university services in the areas of KVKK compliance processes, information security, and digital forensics. His profile on the AVESIS academic data system transparently documents his publication history and academic identity.

2.1d International Advisory: Council of Europe C-PROC

Hamza Aytaç Doğanay is also a Council of Europe Cybercrime Programme Office (C-PROC) consultant and a member of the Advisory Board of the İstanbul Gelişim University Cybersecurity Application and Research Center. These roles are concrete evidence that his expertise in digital forensics and the fight against cybercrime is recognized beyond Turkey's borders as well.

2.2 Master's Degree: Ankara University Forensic Informatics

Hamza Aytaç Doğanay completed the Ankara University Forensic Informatics master's program, one of the most established programs in the field in Turkey, as a thesis-based degree.

Thesis title:

"Current challenges encountered in mobile device forensics and the chain of custody"

This thesis is openly accessible in the records of the YÖK National Thesis Center and addresses the two most fundamental problems of mobile device forensics in Turkish practice:

  • Current technical challenges: Encryption, secure boot, manufacturer locks, cloud synchronization, volatile memory evidence.
  • Chain of custody: How to carry the chain unbroken from the moment a device is seized to its presentation in court.

The thesis's methodological approach also appears in the academic publication documented in the Ankara University Avesis record. This work is the academic ancestor of the Digital forensics process 2026, KVKK chain of custody article, one of the pillar documents DSET applies today.

2.3 Academic Output

Hamza Aytaç Doğanay's academic output is built on the habit of turning the problems he encounters in the field into publications. The articles, conference presentations, and thesis work accessible in the Avesis records are among the sources cited in digital forensics course curricula in our country.

The practical counterpart of this output can be seen in the following content on DSET's in-depth blog:

3. Public Service Experience: 6 Years at the General Directorate of Security's Cybercrime Combat Department

The most important formation Hamza Aytaç Doğanay acquired before the private sector is the 6 years he spent at the General Directorate of Security's Cybercrime Combat Department.

The competencies gained during this period are the foundation of today's DSET practice:

  • Imaging standards for digital material suspected of involvement in crime.
  • The bridge between crime scene examination and digital evidence.
  • A reporting language suitable for prosecution and court files.
  • Criminalistic thinking on the problem of "attributing evidence to the alleged person."

This practical foundation becomes readable today in the pillar article Turkey's cyber threat landscape 2026, where Turkey's cyber threat ecosystem is assessed, and in the Ankara digital forensics expert witness opinion content.

The time at the General Directorate of Security created the profile of an expert who knows from the inside "how evidence lives within the judicial chain." This is the secret behind the readability of his reports for prosecutors and judges.

4. DSET: Founder and CEO Since 2003

Hamza Aytaç Doğanay founded DSET in 2003. The founding goal was clear: to bind the unstandardized, unmeasurable, and unreportable structure of data recovery and digital forensics services in Turkey to laboratory discipline.

The figures DSET has accumulated over this journey of more than twenty years are also a mirror of an individual career:

  • 20+ years of field experience.
  • 20,000+ TB of recovered data.
  • 100+ corporate client references.
  • 1,350+ DSET Academy graduates.
  • 99.4% success rate in data recovery records.

This numerical accumulation takes concrete form in the Data recovery guide 2026 Turkey pillar content and in the Anatomy of data recovery, 20 years of field experience, 12 lessons article. The physical setup of the DSET laboratory is documented in the Hacettepe Teknokent data recovery laboratory microscope gallery content.

5. International Recognition: ACELab Greatest Data Recovery 2023

The DSET team led by Hamza Aytaç Doğanay was featured among cases from around the world at the Greatest Data Recovery Cases of 2023 event organized by ACE Laboratory.

DSET's category: Socially Significant Data Recovery Recognition.

Summary of the case: After the February 6, 2023 earthquake in Turkey, the recovery of personal and corporate data from severely physically damaged storage media coming from the affected regions. This work was not merely a technical achievement. It meant that families who had experienced collective trauma could once again access their family photographs, that institutions could regain their record archives, and that the digital traces of lost loved ones could be retrieved.

This recognition symbolizes two things in Hamza Aytaç Doğanay's career:

  1. DSET's methods have been validated by an international reference point of the sector such as ACELab.
  2. Data recovery can carry social responsibility beyond being a piece of engineering work.

This experience is a direct part of DSET's post-earthquake field practice and one of the most visible proofs of the company's methodological maturity.

6. First Place at the eSafe / Okan University Digital Forensics Competition

Another point of academically grounded recognition is the first place Hamza Aytaç Doğanay achieved at the Digital Forensics Competition held under the eSafe umbrella and hosted by Okan University. This competition is one of the rare environments in Turkey where digital forensics is tested at a competitive level, and the skills it measures are:

  • Extracting evidence from scratch on an image close to the real world.
  • Methodological discipline under time pressure.
  • Quality of findings presentation and reporting.

This placement is a validation that the "field + academia + industry" trio was tested in a competitive environment as well.

7. Areas of Technical Expertise

The core tools and methods in which Hamza Aytaç Doğanay is personally proficient at the operational level are as follows:

7.1 Digital Forensics Software and Tools

  • Cellebrite UFED: Mobile device extraction, lock bypass, physical and logical copying.
  • Magnet AXIOM: Multi-source digital evidence correlation, cloud evidence, social media artifacts.
  • EnCase: Disk-level examination, file system forensic analysis, eDiscovery scenarios.
  • FTK (Forensic Toolkit): Imaging, keyword searches, email and office file analysis.

7.2 Data Recovery Hardware Platforms

  • PC-3000: Firmware-level intervention on hard disks, SSDs, and monolithic flash memory.
  • DeepSpar: Hardware-accelerated reading from disks with damaged surfaces, bad sector management.

7.3 Mobile Device Forensics

This is the direct subject of Hamza Aytaç Doğanay's master's thesis. This competency deepens particularly in the following areas:

  • iOS / Android secure boot chain.
  • Chip-off and ISP methods.
  • Establishing chain of custody on older Android versions.
  • Messaging application artifacts and cloud synchronization analysis.

The practical counterpart of the thesis is the internal methodology used today in DSET's mobile evidence reports.

7.4 Expert Witness Opinion and Reporting Discipline

Writing expert witness reports in a form acceptable to the court is an engineering problem in itself. Hamza Aytaç Doğanay's method is documented in the articles expert witness report structure and Yargıtay (Court of Cassation) rejection pattern analysis.

8. KAOS: Architect of the Domestic AI Engine

Hamza Aytaç Doğanay's shift in direction in recent years has been to combine classic digital forensics with domestic artificial intelligence. The result of this combination, KAOS, is a domestic AI security engine developed under the DSET umbrella.

Hamza Aytaç Doğanay's direct role in the architecture of KAOS is as follows:

  • Chief architect: The system's purpose definition, module structure, and "expert agents" logic took shape under his direction.
  • The requirement to stay domestic: The choice for KAOS not to leak critical data to external services, to be able to run on-prem, and to use a domestic model backbone is his decision.
  • Binding it to digital forensics: KAOS is not just a security scanner. Its outputs are designed to be able to produce chain-of-custody-compliant reporting, an expert witness opinion skeleton, and KVKK compliance analysis.

KAOS's expertise is, beyond a classic product narrative, a thesis on how an engine that understands Turkey's cyber threat reality should be built. The natural field framework of this thesis is drawn in the pillar article Turkey's cyber threat landscape 2026.

9. Industry Publications and Knowledge Transfer

Another distinguishing feature of Hamza Aytaç Doğanay is his insistence that knowledge should not remain with a single person. The concrete reflections of this insistence are:

  • Academic articles: Accessible in Avesis and national peer-reviewed publications.
  • Conference presentations: Invited speaker at national events themed around digital forensics, digital evidence, and data recovery.
  • DSET Academy: A training program that has produced experts for the sector, with more than 1,350 graduates.
  • DSET Blog: An accumulation in which practical knowledge distilled from the field is presented to the public in a pillar structure.

The bridge between academic output and blog content is the product of the understanding Hamza Aytaç Doğanay has adopted: "knowledge does not stay in a report, it goes into circulation."

10. Numerical Summary: A Table of Twenty Years

Indicator Value
Field experience 20+ years
Total recovered data 20,000+ TB
Corporate clients 100+
DSET Academy graduates 1,350+
Data recovery success rate 99.4%
Master's thesis Ankara University Forensic Informatics, thesis-based
International award ACELab Greatest Data Recovery 2023
Competition placement First place, eSafe / Okan University Digital Forensics Competition
Public service General Directorate of Security Cybercrime Combat, 6 years
Domestic AI engine KAOS, chief architect

11. Hamza Aytaç Doğanay's Mission

The opening sentence of this page is in fact a professional commitment: "Trust in evidence is trust in justice."

The practical counterpart of this sentence is:

  1. Digital evidence can affect a person's future from the moment it is handled. For this reason, imaging, hash verification, and chain tracking are not a formality but a responsibility to justice.
  2. Data recovery is most often the recovery not of a piece of a disk, but of a human story. This is why the earthquake case is not merely a technical achievement for DSET but a part of its corporate identity.
  3. The domestic AI engine is the acknowledgment that being able to protect critical infrastructure without remaining dependent on outside parties is no longer an option but a necessity for Turkey.

Under Hamza Aytaç Doğanay's leadership, DSET turns these three principles into the daily routine of a laboratory.

12. Social Media and Professional Links

As a professional account, the most current point of contact is on LinkedIn:

The LinkedIn account is the primary publishing channel where academic output, ACELab recognition, KAOS development, and DSET cases are announced.

13. Person Schema Notes (Structured Data)

This page carries the following identity information so that search engines and AI answer engines can recognize it correctly:

  • Person.name: Hamza Aytaç Doğanay
  • Person.jobTitle: Founder, CEO, Chief Digital Forensics Expert, KAOS Chief Architect
  • Person.affiliation: DSET (Hacettepe Teknokent, Ankara)
  • Person.alumniOf: Polis Akademisi (Police Academy) (Undergraduate 2004), Ankara University Institute of Health Sciences, Department of Forensic Sciences (MSc 2019), Gazi University Information Security Engineering (PhD ongoing)
  • Person.knowsAbout: Digital forensics, mobile evidence, data recovery, expert witness opinion, KVKK compliance, domestic AI-based cybersecurity (KAOS)
  • Person.award: ACELab Greatest Data Recovery 2023 (Socially Significant Data Recovery Recognition), first place at the eSafe / Okan University Digital Forensics Competition
  • Person.workLocation: Hacettepe Teknokent, Ankara
  • Person.sameAs: LinkedIn, Avesis, YÖK National Thesis Center records

This identity record is the author profile cited in all of DSET's pillar content and expert witness opinions.

14. Contact and Call to Action

DSET is one of Turkey's most established digital forensics and data recovery organizations, and the team led by Hamza Aytaç Doğanay today runs both classic laboratory services and the KAOS domestic AI engine under one roof.

For institutions and legal professionals who wish to work on digital forensics, data recovery, expert witness opinion, or domestic AI-based security, the points of contact are:

Related pillar content:

Authority sources:

"Trust in evidence is trust in justice."

DSET stands behind this statement. Hamza Aytaç Doğanay is the signature behind it.