Our Forensic Technology team helps clients manage vast amounts of electronic data and navigate the legal and business processes that are mandated by critical events.
We understand the need to find evidence while maintaining proportionality and minimising cost and disruption. Thanks to experience from eDiscovery cases worldwide, we advise lawyers and company executives on how to best prepare for the possibility of a discovery request.
For a confidential discussion that can lessen the risk of costly and disruptive electronic discoveries, please get in touch for more details.
IT systems are generally not designed to respond to critical events. We offer technological solutions to collect, process and review large and complex data sets from our clients’ IT infrastructure with procedures that hold up in court and before international regulatory bodies.
Our team has the experience, expertise and capacity to guide and advise you through the entire discovery process.
Detect and analyse breaches.
Detect suspicious patterns.
From any number of (un)structured data sources.
We help our clients to manage legal or regulatory incidents and crises in the following areas:
We offer and fully support Relativity, today’s market leading web-based eDiscovery platform. We run Relativity on client’s premises in a stand-alone network, or online hosted by PwC Switzerland. Your benefits include:
Our online platform allows for seamless collaboration between internal teams and outside counsel – across all the different stages of eDiscovery in a single solution, from anywhere in the world via: https://ediscovery.pwc.ch
A Relativity case can be set up in a matter of hours, and review can start while data is being added to the platform in the background. Together with our FTS colleagues from around the world, we can support a 24/7 review, if so desired, to tackle even the most high-pressure incidents.
We are trained in tailoring Relativity to the needs of projects of all shapes and sizes. Projects we support range from a few hundred documents and one reviewer, to millions of documents involving 100+ reviewers from all over the world. We host projects for companies in and outside Switzerland, both online and stand-alone, with only part of the data shared with reviewers abroad – if data privacy laws so dictate.
Security is built into Relativity from the ground up using industry-standard technologies. As an additional security measure, we run Relativity behind the PwC firewall with 2-factor authentication in the same state-of-the-art data centre from which we run our own infrastructure.
“Our team of specialists can tackle any crisis or anxiety causing you troubles: fraud, corruption, contract disputes, litigation and theft of IP or licensing irregularities, regulatory investigations and so on – at a moment’s notice.”
We have worked with many leading companies to deal with integrity issues and investigate allegations of fraud and corruption.
We were on site for the first crisis meeting within 1 hour of the initial call and addressed the biggest challenge: how to acquire data from high placed individuals in 12 countries with minimal business disruption.
Together with local FTS resources, we simultaneously imaged the personal devices and scanned the hardcopy documents of 35 custodians in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa, returning each custodian’s devices within 4 hours. Additionally, we acquired over 20,000,000 emails, documents and financial records from both legacy and current (cloud-based) ERP systems.
While the collection was ongoing, data was transported to Zurich for processing and hosting on the Swiss review platform, where over 30 lawyers were reviewing files from within Germany, Ireland, the USA and Switzerland.
We installed a server and more than 100 reviewer PCs in a stand-alone network on the client’s premises. The server ran a customised review platform, allowing for fine-grained review (based on language, access to client systems and experience) over multiple levels. We created a secure and user-friendly tool on the client’s network through which reviewers could ask the respective relationship managers questions about accounts.
We performed a forensic analysis on the equipment and were able to confirm specialised wiping and file shredding software was used after the executive’s dismissal. We found evidence that an external hard disk, which was regularly connected to the executive’s laptop, had not been handed over. We found that the flash drives submitted had been connected to another device, only days before being handed over. Our client is using these findings in ongoing court proceedings.
We were onsite a few hours after the initial call to set up a plan to find out how this data was leaked, and by whom. Data analytics specialists analysed the log files of the ERP system the data originated from; colleagues from Computer Forensics analysed the laptops of key custodians, and our eDiscovery team captured and analysed email and Internet traffic data to narrow down the list of suspects. A call-home email was sent back to the unknown email address to capture the perpetrator’s IP address. Our client is using our findings in ongoing legal proceedings, and to improve the security of their IT ecosystem.
Call us on day one and we’ll get straight to work securing your data and helping you on the road to successful discovery.
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Forensic Technology Solutions (FTS) is a department within PwC Switzerland that provides the technical infrastructure needed to conduct a wide range of investigations.
With a dedicated forensic lab in Zurich, we are trained in the acquisition and analysis of electronic data. We understand the wider commercial issues – such as how to minimise costs and disruption to business, and the wider legal issues – such as how to deal with data privacy across multiple jurisdictions.
As part of Forensic Services, we combine forensic accounting knowledge with technology expertise, state-of-the-art tools and a uniform, global methodology to provide our clients with sound, experience-based advice. Through our network, we ensure the global reach needed to deal with even the most complex cases in even the most remote locations efficiently and consistently.
With an experienced team from various specialised disciplines and speaking 20 languages, we lend support to enterprises not just in the event of acute financial crimes, but also in the development of preventative measures.
We are connected to a network of 65 FTS departments in 35 countries with over 550 highly skilled professionals. In addition to the skills of our own specialists, we benefit from the experience and capabilities of the global PwC Forensics network, with its more than 3,000 investigators and forensic accountants in 75 countries.
Partner and Forensic Services and Financial Crime Leader, PwC Switzerland
Tel: +41 58 792 17 60
Partner, Forensic Services, TIS and Global Client Partner United Nations, PwC Switzerland
Tel: +41 58 792 17 63
Director, Head of Forensic Technology Solutions, PwC Switzerland
Tel: +41 58 792 16 23
