by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
After about 20 minutes, it became very clear that the best way for Sean Mulholland to explain what his new company does is through a true story.
There’s the one about the woman who rebuffed a male co-worker’s advances.
“He sends her graphic pornography. She tells the boss and the guy denies it,” said Mulholland, owner and president of Mulholland Forensics, LLC — a new and separate branch of Mulholland Investigations.
The company hires Mulholland to look into the matter.
“Robert (Jones company vice president) takes the image and determines there’s no question what transpired,” said Mulholland.
It turns out the man did send a questionable image to his co-worker. However, the story doesn’t end there.
“What should she have done with it? She should have deleted it,” said Mulholland. “Turns out, she forwarded it to a friend.”
Mulholland’s new company isn’t able to just retrieve an e-mail or deleted image. Under the guidance of Jones and Director of Network Securities Wally Eaton, Mulholland Forensics is able to access data long-thought-gone. That data is used by lawyers and major corporations in court and to help companies prove current and former employees have breached company security policies.
“The key word is lawful. There is no hacking. All of this is 100 percent lawfully done,” said Mulholland, adding that Jones tends to cringe when the word “hacking” is mentioned.
“We have the consent of the business owner,” said Jones. “The information is brought to us.”
Mulholland, Jones and Eaton all come from varying, but relevant, backgrounds. Mulholland is a former New York City police officer, Jones was with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Eaton was the former chief of network security for the City and also teaches cyber security at Florida Community College at Jacksonville.
“It’s a totally separate company from Mulholland Investigations,” said Mulholland of the forensics company he started in July in space on the 18th floor of Independent Square. “It’s a separate and distinct type of investigation at an expert level.”
Everyone within the company believes that computer forensics will become an invaluable human resources tool in the future. In addition to being able to trace people’s backgrounds practically until birth, Jones and Eaton can help companies evaluate other companies. Mulholland has said in the past that if a company is looking to buy or merge with another, it’s beneficial to know the financial history of the company and its partners.
On the personal side, the proliferation of e-mail on a worldwide basis has created an information trail that can be tracked in the same manner as the traditional paper trail. According to Jones, there are 60 billion — yes, that’s 60 billion — e-mails sent every single day.
“The FBI says cyber-activity is up 300 percent from five years ago,” explained Jones when asked if the World Wide Web will ever max out in its ability to receive, store and send information. “However, the storage capacity is up 4,600 percent.”
As the Web expands, the number of e-mails and other electronic messages will grow exponentially, and Mulholland Forensics, in theory, can trace the origin of every one as well as their e-mail tree. That ability, according to Mulholland, Jones and Eaton, will prove invaluable to companies and the judicial system.
“The history of computer forensics is in law enforcement,” said Mulholland. “Now, people have recognized there’s a real need for it on the civil side. By definition, forensics is the ability to utilize evidence obtained in court.”
Mulholland said another facet he’d like to see his forensics company get more into is the proactive side of computer searches. He believes small to mid-sized business could benefit from his company’s ability to help prevent breaches of security, determine which employees are wasting company time and how they are doing it as well as which Web sites employees visit.
Mulholland said he has a good working relationship with the local legal community, but now it’s time to expand.
“We are dug in with the big law firms, we are in good shape,” said Mulholland. “That’s where Crystal (Draper, marketing rep) comes in.”
Like electronic messaging, computer forensics is likely here to stay. As long as people would prefer to blast out an e-mail than pick up the phone or walk down the hall to ask a question or make a comment, the need to trace those messages will exist.
“People treat e-mail like a phone call,” said Mulholland, adding that most people don’t realize there’s basically a permanent record of every electronic message sent, whether it’s to the next cubicle or Indonesia.
If you don’t ever want Eaton or Jones knocking on your door with a subpoena for your computer, Eaton has one simple suggestion.
“Never put anything in an e-mail that you don’t want on the front page of the paper,” he said.