Computer Forensics Experts - What to look for if your business need to hire one

Computer Forensics Experts - what to look for if your business need to hire one.

 

From time to time, a client will come to us to investigate an employee or ex-employee action that may include missing data, locked user accounts, the possibility of stolen proprietary company data or some other computer related anomalies. The employer may be considering a legal remedy through court action for suspected improprieties and needs to know what the ex-employee may have done, when they did it, where they did it, and how.

 

In these and similar instances, what the employer/business owner needs, is someone who can investigate and analyze data access and data changes as well as understand what these changes mean in the context of the computing environment, all without destroying or changing the original computer data. With electronic data, this is easier said than done.

 

In fact, there are some schools of thought that suggest that since electronic data can be changed by so many simple, common occurrences and elements like magnets, hard drive head misalignments, cell phones, house hold electrical currents, and other causes, that computer forensics is more fiction than fact, and cannot meet the Federal or State Rules of Evidence requirements necessary for introduction in court.

 

Another consideration is that hard drives are nothing more than recording devices, and can be unreliable and problematic in their own right. For example, a recent Google study from February 2007 entitled “Failure Trends in Large Hard Disk Populations” found a generalized failure rate of  1.7 to 8.6 percent in consumer grade disk drives. This suggests that in a case of suspected employee deleted or mangled data, even the best educated and experienced computer forensics expert may be incapable of determining whether the data that was changed was changed due to anomalous hard drive operation or deliberate and malicious user actions. And this lack of conclusion could come at a very high dollar cost to your business.

 

And then there are legal and strategy questions about whether or not hiring a Computer Forensics Expert will advantage your case or be worth the extra cost. Even in this computer age, many employees still steal company information on paper as it is often easier and less detectible to print out a twenty (20) page list of clients and stuff it in thier pocket rather than send it as an attachment to thier personal email account.

 

In spite of these questions, theories, and realities, computer forensics is introduced and relied upon in court with increasing frequency.

 

What this means, is that if your business is considering using electronic data as the foundation for anything you present in court, you will need someone with confirmable client references, verified and successful open court testimony, documented and demonstrated expertise in computer forensics, and good foundational computer skills; you will need an experienced and seasoned Computer Forensics Expert.

 

While helping clients identify and vet potential Computer Forensics Experts for their court cases, we have found that generally, Computer Forensics Experts fall into one of four (4) categories:

 

Contact us to help you find and validate any potential Computer Forensics Experts you may use, because finding a real Computer Forensics Expert can be easier said than done.