Misappropriation of Trade Secrets – A Comprehensive Investigation

CHALLENGE

An insurance industry client hired 70 employees from a competitor. They were accused of receiving and using trade secrets from the departed employee’s company.

The Plaintiff had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to perform digital forensics, both internally and through an independent service provider.

The client needed expertise for the following:

To understand how to read and interpret tens of hundreds of pages of “digital forensic evidence”.
To understand how data gets stored, how data can be moved from one location to another, and to explain the reasons data
may not be present on certain systems.
To understand, explain and analyze the various ways to examine systems for the exfiltration and usage of data.

Solution

Using a team of experts, we evaluated the security measures in place as compared to industry standards. In addition, an expert report was composed describing our conclusions.

Our iDS Digital Forensics Consulting Experts examined numerous reports, artifacts and other materials to determine what the forensic evidence “really showed”.

The iDS Consulting team analyzed and reported on the following:

That hundreds of devices had been forensically imaged and analyzed.
That the artifacts listed in the reports simply showed access of documents from the corporate devices themselves as opposed to
documents being exfiltrated.
That no actual data had been exfiltrated.

Result

Through live testimony, the iDS expert was able to demonstrate the lack of forensic evidence to support any allegation of electronic data misappropriation.

Our client won a trial verdict, stating that in large part it was due to the iDS work dissecting the evidence and our ability to testify about the lack of forensic evidence in plain English.