Your Company Is Walking Out the Door
Today just about every company in America has their vital
proprietary information on computers. Everything from email, client lists,
pricing models, to trade secrets is stored on company computers. In many cases
those computers leave the office daily, or sometimes never show up onsite if
the employee works from home. Even if your company utilizes the most rigid
security rules and not a single computer leaves the facility, emails are still
sent back and forth from smart phones. A lot of the time attachments can be
saved directly from emails to the smart phones and then transferred on from there
without the company’s IT department ever being aware.
This situation becomes even more precarious when you include
companies that allow people to bring their own device (BYOD). In these
situations company data often resides on the personal laptop or in a “cloud”
solution where the data are available from any device connected to the
internet. What happens when the employee leaves? Can you guarantee that nothing
was stolen, deleted maliciously, or taken to a competing shop? Without
conducting a proper digital forensic investigation by certified examiners you
may never know what was taken. Even if your internal IT department does their due
diligence in trying to determine a theft, without the proper forensic handling
of the evidence, it may not be admissible in court.
Attorney Sid Leach from the law firm Snell & Wilmer
wrote an excellent paper (“What Every Lawyer Needs to Know about Computer Forensic Evidence”) pertaining to the valuable information that digital
forensic investigations reveal. Whether it pertains to fraudulent activities,
non-compete contracts, harassment, or intellectual property theft, Mr. Leach
explains that “A forensic examination of a departing employee’s laptop or
computer workstation can provide a goldmine of information concerning what the
ex-employee was doing”.
In my own experiences I have seen companies both large and
small with employees leaving abruptly or on bad terms causing suspicions as to
their activities. It is always in the company’s best interest to at least have
a forensic examiner create a forensically sound bit-by-bit copy of the device
before it is used by another employee. In these situations, even if your
company doesn’t proceed with an immediate investigation, at least you have a
court admissible copy to work from if anything were to arise in the future.
Wapack Labs is a digital forensic firm based in Manchester, NH with certified
and experienced digital forensic examiners to handle any investigation or
discovery need. Contact us today to see how we can help you!
