Posted Monday, May 7, 2001
Cybersleuths tap legal community for growth
By Christine Siemiernik, The Toronto Business Journal

A Toronto company that has built a reputation for recovering data from crashed computers is recasting itself as a high-tech sleuth with an expertise in chasing down computer viruses, hackers, deleted e-mails and investigating cases of fraud and vandalism.

CBL Data Recovery Technologies Inc. specializes in recovering lost data due to theft, fire, natural disaster, human error, computer viruses, system crashes or malfunctions. To help expand its range of services to include criminal investigations, the company has enlisted the help of retired OPP investigator Larry Edgar.

"We think we can offer a good service to the legal community and the policing community,” says CBL president Bill Margeson.

This move will allow CBL to offer its services, including recovering evidence that might otherwise be lost forever, to police forces and litigation lawyers.

There are times when police have to search through hard drives to find evidence and that's where CBL comes in. Technicians clone the hard drive in order not to compromise the evidence and try to recover the lost information.

Margeson recounts the case of an Internet service provider that made a fraudulent insurance claim, alleging that a hacker had broken into its system, found clients' passwords and ruined some of its equipment. CBL found that a hacker had indeed broken into the system, but that the claims of ruined equipment just weren't true.

"That one was quite a coup. We did find evidence that half of its story was correct, but the other half wasn't.”

Margeson says this type of forensic work doesn't compromise the confidentiality of data.

"We actually don't really see the data as a matter of fact. We operate at this hexadecimal level, so we're never seeing what's in someone's accounting. We're doing the detective work at a quite different level,” he says.

CBL also has worked on cases with the U.S. Federal Bankruptcy Court and has plans to offer its forensic services to the U.S. market where, Margeson says, there's more opportunity to get involved with large litigation cases.

CBL is a Toronto-area company that's been around since 1993. It has offices in Beijing, the U.K., Germany and, as of next month, in Armonk, New York. Despite its international operations, Margeson says the company retains its strong local roots.

"We're very local. Still to this day, a good deal of our business is Toronto-based.” CBL has worked with all of the major Canadian banks as well as government, police, the military, Toronto movie houses and countless other companies. Margeson is unable to reveal specifics about its work because of confidentiality guarantees.

"Most of what we do is confidential — that's one of the deals and no one wants anyone to know they've had a problem,” says Margeson.

He will talk about one "cool” situation involving Canaz Corp., an environmental film and new media group. Two filmmakers lost two years of work, including three months of filming Beluga whales in the freezing Arctic. "That was a cool situation.

He had some priceless photography in graphics. He had developed a 360-degree camera. Incredible stuff. And, of course, the day before presentation, the system crashed,” says Margeson.

The company has just partnered with American company PromiseMark to deliver data recovery and virus protection services at a less expensive rate.

"It's a warranty concept in the event of a catastrophe, they drop that laptop or something like that. They have an alternative now to losing data,” explains Margeson. "They can process it through us and in most cases … we'll get the data back on CDs. It becomes an inconvenience, not a catastrophe.”

Despite technological advances, he maintains there will always be a demand for data recovery.

"It [losing data] happens. That's our motto this year. People drop things, raid systems, and the most sophisticated systems are always vulnerable to fire and theft and flood. We're there [to help recover lost data].”