OSINFO - Open Sources Information

ATLANTA, Jan. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Corporate espionage or just simple theft of confidential or sensitive information from a company's computer is on the rise in U.S. businesses.

"A recent Computer Security Institute / FBI Computer Crime and Security survey reported that nearly 40 percent of companies surveyed attributed more than 20 percent of their organizations' financial losses to insider attacks," said Greg Fordham whose firm, K&F Consulting Inc., provides a variety of e- discovery, computer forensics and damages quantification services to the legal profession.

To meet the growing demand from companies looking for solutions that quickly spot potential abuses K&F Consulting has developed Breach Scan -- an exclusive service that identifies for management information on a computer that might have been stolen.

When an employee, particularly a key one, leaves an organization there's always a concern about how much information may have left with that individual -- especially if that person is going to a competitor firm or starting a new business.

To protect the company management needs to know what has happened on that employee's computer in order to determine if some level of legal action may be needed.

"All too often we find companies, who have focused on protecting the organization from an outside attack, have left themselves completely venerable to an internal one," he said.

"Using CDs, e-mail, thumb drives, camera cards, Ipods and countless other means, company secrets or confidential information can be stolen in the time it takes a supervisor to walk from an office to the coffee machine and back," Fordham notes.

"With Breach Scan we can alert management to a serious problem, or put their mind at ease about an employee or former employee's actions," Fordham said.

"Breach Scan can also be used in other situations, particularly civil litigation matters, when it's important to know what information may have resided on an individual's computer," Fordham added.

A routine Breach Scan review normally requires three-to-four days to complete and starts at $3,000.

"We've seen situations where departing employees have taken formulas, customer names and addresses, business plans, patent information, intellectual property or other sensitive information that resided on their computer," Fordham said.

The most common ways a departing employee "lifts material" is by downloading it onto a thumb drive or camera card, or hiding it in an innocuous appearing email sent to a third party and then deleting the file before departing the company Fordham says.

However Fordham says trying to hide data theft from a computer is somewhat like throwing pebbles into a pond. "The pebbles themselves will sink to the bottom and may not be recoverable, but the ripples they create on the water and the footprints the pebble thrower leaves on the shoreline are detectable," he said.

About K&F Consulting

With offices located in metro Atlanta, K&F Consulting services a nationwide clientele. The firm provides a variety of e-discovery, computer forensics including database forensics and software forensics and damages quantification services. For more information on K&F Consulting or its Breach Scan service visit http://www.knfcon.com or call 770-642-0311.

SOURCE K&F Consulting Inc.

Molly Martin of K&F Consulting, Inc., +1-770-642-0311, Toll Free, +1-800-335-1188, Fax, +1-770-642-9913, molly@knfcon.com