Termination Issues
When you terminate an employee for a specific reason, it is important to document the situation with evidence in the event that the employee sues the company for wrongful termination.
We can search for and obtain evidence to support your reasons for termination. We can also duplicate the media the employee used for immediate analysis or for future use.
Trade Secrets
Trade secrets are any assets of your company that, if placed in the hands of a competitor, could cause considerable damage to your business. Examples: blue prints, software code, customer information, or a company phone list.
Electronic evidence can help determine if something was taken, what was taken, who took it, and when it happened.
Sexual Harassment
In a sexual harassment case, it may be necessary to collect evidence that either supports or disproves any allegation. Examples: e-mails that contain specific words, offensive documents or inappropriate Internet sites.
By searching all sectors of the media, we can obtain electronic evidence to help support or defend a harassment case.
Harassment / Threats
Harassment doesn't have to be sexual in nature. There are many ways that an individual can harass someone or make threats to a co-worker, or the company. We often see this manifested through threatening messages or documents, blackmail, or inappropriate e-mails/jokes.
Whatever form harassment takes, we can search large quantities of data from different types of media to find facts that will help prove or disprove a claim.
Internet Offenders
The Internet is a vital part of many businesses and, unfortunately, is often abused. Examples of inappropriate usage include pornography, downloaded files, and inappropriate communication.
When offenses of this type occur, actions must be taken immediately because evidence can disappear quickly. We can catalog most images found on the computer and timeline Internet usage.
Lost and Tampered Files
Disgruntled employees can cause a great deal of damage to a company's data oftentimes deleting or altering files, changing passwords or reformatting hard drives.
We have the ability and experience to retrieve data that was tampered with or lost.
Embezzlement and Fraud
Embezzlement and fraud have become common in businesses today. Examples: taking money from the company, stealing products from inventory or receiving kick-backs.
We can capture accounting information, such as inventory and invoices, to help track questionable activities.
Abuse of Time and Equipment
Abuse of time and equipment may not hurt any individual, but it does hurt the profitability of a company. For example, our monitoring has found that employees have conducted side business on company computers and used company computers extensively for personal issues.
We can look for data that indicates this type of activity is occurring on company time.
Discrimination
When employees feel they have been overlooked for a promotion or raise, due to age, race or gender, they may claim that they have been discriminated against.
We can search the computers of the employee and the managers in question to look for evidence to prove or disprove the reason for termination.
Corporate Monitoring
Enterprises, whether small companies, large companies, schools, hospitals, or government institutions, spend millions each year to stop external security attacks, though studies show that INTERNAL attacks happen more often and cause more damage.
Some alarming statistics:
•External Attacks cost an average of around $57,000 (Vista), while internal attacks cost a stunning average of $6.57 Million Dollars (CSI/FBI Study – 2002).
80% of companies reported financial losses due to computer breaches (CSI/FBI). Vista Research has also found that 70% of security breaches come from the inside.
•Findings suggest losses of proprietary information and intellectual property in the range of $53-$59 Billion dollars (US Chamber of Commerce/PWC)
•Your source code, your intellectual property, your customer lists – almost all is in digital format and can be stolen from you – 40% of employees admitted receiving confidential information about other companies via e-mail or the internet (NFO Worldgroup) and last year, in California alone, customer lists were sold for over $935 Million (Businessweek)
•More and more, companies are held responsible by the courts for what their employees do on their workplace computers, being held legally liable for such things as:
•Downloading MP3 and other Copyrighted materials
•Sexual harassment in e-mails
•Other Government regulations, such as HIPAA, the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act, Sarbanes Oxley, and others
•Selling Customer Lists or individual records
•Finally, web surfing non-work sites results in an estimated 40% loss in productivity each year (Gartner), costing employers an estimated $53 Billion dollars per year (Computer Economics, Inc.)
•Monitoring Products can save businesses many of these concerns by capturing all activity on all PC’s, including all files accessed and all IM and e-mail correspondence. We provide a safety net for large enterprises by watching all activity on every PC – the equivalent of a “black box” that records everything. We invented this category and are the trusted market leader.
•The intent is not to be “big brother” or to “spy”. We believe in a reasonable amount of employee privacy, and we also think a little web surfing by employees each day is fine. By telling your employees that they are being monitored, what most of our thousands of business customers have found is that the DETERRENT effect of monitoring will simply take care of any computer mis-use problems, potentially saving you millions.
Forensic Services Offered:
•Computer forensics including forensic analysis of all file systems
•Mobile Phone and PDA Analysis
•Deleted file recovery
•Search capabilities (hard drive/network/storage mediums)
•Physical media analysis
•Secure storage
•Corrupt operating system data retrieval
•Computer forensics including forensic analysis of all file systems
•Email investigations- tracking of malicious / threatening e-mail senders
•Forensic bitsream imaging of various digital storage devices (at our lab or on-site)
•Onsite acquisition of digital/electronic evidence and custody
•Filtration and consolidation of data including emails and files
•Law Firm consultations including defence strategies & Corporate investigations
•Expert witness service
•Computer security, hacker tracking and in-house protection
•Fraud Investigations