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!

Why use Digital Forensics? Let us help you solidify your case!

Why Use Digital Forensics?

Working in the digital forensics field has opened my eyes to many other professional practices. Specifically in my job I deal with a lot of lawyers, law firms small and large, and plenty of litigation protocol. One of the most interesting aspects of the law field to me and specifically when dealing with on-stand experts, is that you don’t ask a question you don’t already know (or think you know) the answer to. This important factor made me think: Why don’t more litigators use digital forensics in their cases? Having a certified forensic expert helping you in your case is like giving you the answers to questions you haven’t even thought about asking!

Recently I worked in Chicago where I collaborated with lawyers throughout the country who had various levels of experience with digital forensics and computer investigations. One of my most memorable cases was an attorney from a very small law firm in the suburbs of Chicago who dealt with Employment and Labor law. This attorney had come to me with ongoing litigation concerns about an employee who left a company and went to work for a direct competitor within a matter of weeks.  This employee had been in a position where they were privy to a lot of sensitive data about the company (product specs, pricing models, client lists, sales leads, etc.). While we already knew that the employee had violated their non-compete contract, counsel was worried that the business might have been harmed by the theft of this sensitive information. I was brought in to either put these fears to rest, or create a “slam dunk” case with empirical digital evidence.

Not long after our initial conversation where I addressed what kind of things we may find in a digital investigation, counsel was able to procure the work laptop from the company. Within a week of receiving the device I was able to image (duplicate the evidence to be able to work on a copy), parse, index, and analyze the entire system. Combined with a simple questionnaire from the client, I had a complete understanding of the activities on the system. In this case (as with most investigations) I focused on the employee’s last two weeks at the company. I was able to pin down that before leaving the company (and pretty much right before walking out of the door) the employee was attaching USB thumb drives to the system, and copying data to these drives. Along with the USB devices, I could see that through emails and by viewing his Internet history (Gmail, DropBox, LinkedIn) that the employee had been planning to leave the company for some time. The combination of the employee’s actions, coupled with solid digital evidence, proved that sensitive information was taken from the company laptop, and copied to personal devices. Information provided by digitial forensic examination of the laptop provided counsel with ample means to win their case.

The best part for me on a personal level was that this case was the first time the attorney had ever used a computer investigation. It provided me the ability to teach counsel exactly what we do, how digital forensic science is proven in court, and how best to phrase his questions and shape his case to present what we found. Not only was this his first case involving digital forensics, but it was my first deposition as well! That give and take provided a great working relationship for the case going forward and the follow on investigations that arose from it.

At Wapack Labs we are driven to provide that same level of service to litigators throughout the Employment and Labor, Intellectual Property, and Technology law practices. Give us a call to see how we can help! Find us online at http://wapacklabs.com/ or give us a call at 603-606-1246. Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn as well as this blog.