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Employee Theft Investigations: Intellectually Property Theft and Business Trade Secrets Investigations | Computer Forensics Associates

Intellectual property theft and trade secret theft often go unnoticed until an employee is terminated. Suddenly a competitor introduces a new product or process that is virtually identical to yours. By performing a computer forensic investigation on any electronic devices the employee had access to, sufficient evidence can be found to prove theft of intellectual business property and and business trade secrets. This evidence can be used in court to stop the competitor’s use, prosecute the responsible party(s) and win compensatory damages.

Computer Forensic investigations help businesses uncover suspected intellectual property theft, trade secret theft and patent infringement by investigating computers, smart phones, cell phones, hard drives, servers and other data storage devices. Common types of intellectual property include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets including but not limited to intangible assets like musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs.

Take these steps if you suspect theft of intellectual property by an employee:

  1. Identify all computers, laptops, smart phones,and external devices that may hold potential evidence.
  2. Secure the suspect computers and prevent further use until a forensic image can be collected.
  3. Begin documenting why you suspect IP theft, fraud or patent infringement.
  4. Contact a computer forensics company like Computer Forensics Associates and make arrangements to capture a forensically sound image so you preserve the evidence and prevent tampering or spoliation.

via Employee Theft Investigations: Intellectually Property Theft and Business Trade Secrets Investigations.

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Russian, Chinese Companies ‘Most Likely’ To Offer Bribes | Radio Free Europe

In a new report, the anticorruption group Transparency International (TI) says bribing public officials when doing business abroad is a regular occurrence.

According to a survey of 3,000 business executives from developed and developing countries, companies from Russia are seen as most likely to do that.

On November 2, the Berlin-based group released its 2011 “Bribe Payers Index,”  which ranks 28 leading international and regional exporting countries by the likelihood of their firms to bribe abroad.

Russia ranked 28th, scoring worse than China, Mexico, and India.

According to Robin Hodess, TI’s group director for research and knowledge, the fact that China and Russia are at the bottom of the index is a major worry.

“Of course it’s a concern, because the economy in both countries has been growing dramatically as has the level of investment coming from both,” she said. “In terms of their economic power abroad, it’s really matching their political power.”

The report itself says: “Given the increasing global presence of businesses from these countries, bribery and corruption are likely to have a substantial impact on the societies in which they operate and on the ability of companies to compete fairly in these markets.”

It pointed out that foreign-direct-investment (FDI) flows alone amounted to $120 billion in 2010 for both countries, more than five times the value of FDI outflows from Brazil and India combined.

Dutch, Swiss, Belgians, Germans, and Japanese companies get the top scores.

But TI says not one of the 28 countries surveyed is perceived as “wholly clean of bribery” and few have made a major improvement since the last bribery index in 2008.

via Russian, Chinese Companies ‘Most Likely’ To Offer Bribes.

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SFL Data Named One of Bay Area’s Top 100 Fastest-Growing Private Companies

SFL Data announced today that it has been selected as one of the “Top 100 Fastest-Growing Private Companies” in the San Francisco Bay Area for 2011 by the San Francisco Business Times. The company was the first to provide a fixed-price electronic discovery managed service to Fortune 500 companies and AmLaw 250 firms. Based on the success of its proprietary e-discovery service model that provides defensible results, reduced costs and greater control, SFL Data demonstrated a 71.3% increase in revenue growth from 2008 to 2010, ranking it 61st out of 100 Bay Area companies.

“What a credit to these outstanding companies that they have shown such noteworthy growth in the years from 2008 to 2010 – years that many companies were thrilled to stay flat,” said SF Business Times Publisher Mary Huss.

Roughly half of the companies are new to this year’s Fast Private List, including SFL Data. The e-discovery managed service provider’s 71.3% growth increase was supported by a 60% increase in staff – from 58 to 93 employees over the three year period.

“The expertise of our technical staff, knowledge of legal industry and dedication to customer service has enabled us to capitalize on the need for more efficient e-discovery. We look forward to our continued growth as more corporations and law firms realize the benefits of having the best e-discovery team without building it themselves,” said SLF Data CEO Christian Lawrence.

via SFL Data Named One of Bay Area’s Top 100 Fastest-Growing Private Companies.

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How Google Was Tripped up by a Bad Search | PCWorld Business Center

In the end it was a search that let Google down.

The company suffered a setback in its patent dispute with Oracle last week when a U.S. judge denied Google’s request to keep an internal Google email out of the case record. The email, written by a Google engineer, could suggest to a jury that Google knew it needed a license to use Sun’s — now Oracle’s — Java technology in Android.

Ironically, considering this is Google, organizer of the world’s information, the email might never have seen the light of day if the search tools used to identify documents covered by attorney-client privilege had done their job, legal experts said.

The incident also shines a light on an area of technology — electronic discovery — that’s creating big challenges for lawyers as more communication moves online. And it helps explain why Hewlett-Packard is willing to spend US$10 billion to buy Autonomy, one of the biggest providers of e-discovery software and services.

The Google incident apparently stems from a mistake by one of the top law firms it hired to fight Oracle’s lawsuit, which accuses Google of patent and copyright infringement in Android. It’s a high-stakes case that could potentially cost Google billions of dollars in damages, and force it to start charging handset makers a license fee for Android.

Like many corporate lawsuits, this one began with a discovery phase. Each party is required to identify all the emails, chat logs and other documents relevant to the case, and produce them for the opposing legal team. Because there are often millions of documents involved, they use software tools to define date ranges, search for keywords and find the material they have to produce.

Communications discussing legal advice with attorneys are protected by attorney-client privilege, meaning they don’t have to be made public. Google argued that its potentially incriminating email fell into this category.

It was written by Google engineer Tim Lindholm last August, a few weeks before Oracle filed suit against Google. At the time, Oracle had threatened to sue Google for billions of dollars, and Lindholm was instructed by Google executives to see what alternatives to Java existed for use in Android, apparently to strengthen their negotiating position.

via How Google Was Tripped up by a Bad Search | PCWorld Business Center.

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Poor Email Mgt Risks Legal Action, Study Warns | eWEEK Europe UK

Poor email management by firms is risking legal consequences a majority of workers believe

A survey from software developer Oasys has revealed 96 percent of employees believe their companies face possible legal risks associated with poor email management.

Indeed, one in five workers stated that their company faces “high risk”, according to the survey of 1,237 employees.

The findings were part of the company’s September 2011 Business Behaviour & Email Management Project, which show that time constraints during the e-discovery process are indeed a major factor.

Lost Emails

The survey revealed that more than a third of business professionals are losing 2 hours or more every day searching for emails that are hard to find. Thirty-four percent of employees surveyed said they spend on average up to 2 hours a day searching for emails, while 8.4 percent spend up to 3 hours a day in the process.

“What most companies don’t understand are the costly challenges associated with having a disorganised email system in the event of litigation,” said attorney Joseph Dennis. “In some cases we’ve seen companies fined by regulatory agencies as much as $700,000 (£439,000) for not being able to produce specific emails under very tight timeframes imposed by the courts during the e-discovery process.”

With the volume of email set to increase, the problem is projected to get much worse, the Oasys study suggested. According to a report by The Radicati Group, a technology market research firm, the number of email users is estimated to rise to 1.9 billion by 2013, and many companies have still failed to implement effective solutions to handle the constantly increasing volumes.

via Poor Email Mgt Risks Legal Action, Study Warns | eWEEK Europe UK.

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The Big Business of ‘Big Data’ – NYTimes.com

Is Big Data a Bubble?

In case you’re in a hurry: Of course it is. And that is good.

Longer version: Last week there were several events that convinced me that one of the great tech bubbles inflating right now is around what people have agreed to call “Big Data.” Basically the term reflects the fact that its now so easy to digitize and put on the Internet all kinds of information — things as diverse as the measurements of passive sensors,  most or all the world’s books, 200 million tweets a day and most of the world’s significant financial transactions — that the data is growing enormously.

Big Data is really about, however, the benefits we will gain by cleverly sifting through it to find and exploit new patterns and relationships. You see it now in things like Facebook ads, which are put in front of you because the posts you have read and contributed to (which Facebook’s algorithms get to examine as the price of this “free” service) indicate you might be ready to buy the advertised good.

Other companies look at air and soil data to write insurance about crop production. Further out, people want to seek patterns in raw medical data for possible causes and cures for disease, bypassing much of the old hypothesis-experiment model; this article from Wired tells of how the Google co-founder Sergey Brin used this in Parkinson’s research.

Last week’s gathering of the tech tribes, the Web 2.0 conference, focused heavily on the benefits of the ubiquity of Big Data — ad placement at Google, Coca-Cola vending machines that develop a personal relationship with the buyer, or what Facebook algorithms are doing to the cultivation of our souls. Microsoft held a one-hour session for developers on all the big, reliable databases it would offer them to make new products.

via The Big Business of ‘Big Data’ – NYTimes.com.

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Privacy alert: Verizon is now monitoring your mobile Web habits – Computerworld Blogs

Verizon Wireless users, listen up:

Verizon is making a significant change to its privacy policy for mobile users this week. By default, the company will now use a bunch of your info for “certain business and marketing reports” and for “making mobile ads you see more relevant.”

This info includes the URLs of websites you visit over Verizon’s network and also your device’s location data. Some of those details may be shared with outside companies as well. Verizon says none of it will personally identify you.

via Privacy alert: Verizon is now monitoring your mobile Web habits – Computerworld Blogs.

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Litigation Funding Market Heats Up – WSJ

At least three start-up businesses are entering the fledgling “alternative litigation funding” market this year, according to this WSJ story today.

One of the new players is Bentham Capital LLC, which opened for business last Monday. It’s focusing on commercial and intellectual-property litigation, according to its chief investment officer, Ralph Sutton, a former lawyer at Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams, & Sheppard. Bentham’s parent, IMF Australia Ltd., has more than 87 million Australian dollars in assets.

Another new player is John P. “Sean” Coffey, a former plaintiff lawyer at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann and a former lead trial lawyer for investors in the case against Wall Street banks arising from the collapse of the former telecom company WorldCom Inc. His start-up firm is called BlackRobe Capital Partners LLC.

via Litigation Funding Market Heats Up – Law Blog – WSJ.

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Does Size Really Matter? – Storage & Destruction Business

In today’s world, the age-old question “Does size really matter?” has possibly inspired nearly as much spirited debate as religion, politics and the meaning of life, at least when it comes to the destruction of devices containing digital data.

Shredding is a recognized and accepted method to physically destroy data storage media and devices; but, the question becomes just how much shredding is enough.

 

SANITIZED FOR YOUR PROTECTION

The generic term “sanitization” is applied to different methods of eliminating data from digital media and hard drives. Sanitization is defined in National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-88, “Guidelines for Media Sanitization,” as “the general process of removing data from storage media, such that there is reasonable assurance that the data may not be easily retrieved and reconstructed.” (NIST Special Publication 800-88 is available at http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-88/NISTSP800-88_rev1.pdf.)

Methods of sanitization include:

Clearing data on a hard disk involves overwriting them with other characters. This process results in a physically functioning drive that can be re-used.

Purging of the hard drive would include degaussing, which would remove all data, including data in the “service area” of the drive. A degaussed drive appears physically intact but is no longer functional and void of data. Degaussed drives, therefore, cannot be re-used.

Physical destruction of the hard disk will make that drive inoperable by compromising the physical structure of the storage media. Methods of physical destruction include disintegration, pulverization, shredding and incineration. All of these methods will make the data a hard drive contains nearly impossible to recover.

NIST Special Publication 800-88 does provide for shredding of hard drives as an acceptable method of physical destruction but does not indicate a minimum particle size. This standard also provides the following definitions of the above methodologies:

Disintegration is “a physically destructive method of sanitizing media; the act of separating into component parts.”

Pulverization is “a physically destructive method of sanitizing media; the act of grinding to a powder or dust.”

Shredding is “a method of sanitizing media; the act of cutting or tearing into small pieces.”

Incineration is “a physically destructive method of sanitizing media; the act of burning completely to ashes.”

via Does Size Really Matter? – Storage & Destruction Business.

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