Get to Know Ken Lew, Manager, Digital Forensics

Ken Lew is a Manager with MNP’s Digital Forensics team. Learn what drew him to this field and hear some of his tips for keeping your business protected from rogue employees and cyber crime.

What is digital forensics and what led you to it?

Forensics is the application of scientific techniques to legal questions. Digital forensics is the scientific examination of digital devices for court-ready evidence. I became interested in digital forensics because I wanted to apply my knowledge of computers, and electronic devices in general, to solve problems in an analytical way. I’m not very good at creating things but I’m good at analyzing things, so forensics seemed like a good choice as it satisfies my natural curiosity and my passion for computers.

As a business owner, what should I know about digital forensics and where data hides? 

Digital forensics can be thought of as a tool or a service that can help you answer questions about your business; questions such as “who’s stealing from me”, “what data was leaked to my competitors”, who was at the office at odd hours of the night and what were they doing?” The answers are found in the data that exists on any device that contains data — computer, smart phones, photocopiers, printers, digital cameras etc.

How can digital forensics help me? When would I need it?

Digital forensics can be used to determine what happened on the various devices you and your business use on a daily basis. Special software tools and techniques can be used to extract all kinds of data from those devices in order to paint a picture of what happened and who did it. This can be used in all kinds of civil and criminal cases such as fraud, rogue or ex-employees, IP theft (data exfiltration), data breaches, policy breaches, or employee termination, to name just a few.

What are some of the trends in digital forensics that you feel will have an impact on BC businesses?

While it’s difficult to find accurate statistics about the frequency of digital forensic investigation types, we believe that data breaches (hacks) and to a lesser degree, data exfiltration or IP theft are on the rise due to the impact of COVID and people working from home. Of course, fraud is an ever-present risk as is employee misconduct.

What is the most important thing business owners can do to reduce the risk of data exfiltration or a data breach?

As a business owner, there are several things you can do to lower your overall risk profile. To protect against data breaches, there are three key areas to look at:

• ensure your software and hardware systems are up-to-date and patched
• ask employees to use strong passwords and enable two-factor authentication
• make sure your defensive systems, (e.g., firewall, intrusion detection system) are properly configured

For mitigating data exfiltration or employee misconduct:

• conduct regular backups of employee laptops, especially for employees who are critical to the business
• secure your data. Consider doing a forensic backup of laptops of important employees. This can be very useful in cases where an employee suddenly leaves or leaves under suspicious circumstances. If the employee maliciously wipes the laptop or refuses to return it, at least you have a forensic copy.
• Monitor and take note of suspicious employee behaviour, e.g. coming and going at odd hours, changes in attitude or behaviour, unusual requests, etc.
• Make sure you have up-to-date offline backups of your most important data assets.

To learn more about digital forensics and protecting your business, contact Ken Lew at 778.309.4750 or [email protected].