“Most organizations think they’re safe,” says Jeremy Wunsch, founder and CEO of Minneapolis-based LuciData, a computer forensics company that specializes in what Wunsch calls internal-threat management. “But they forget that the real risk is that trusted insider. That employee that you’ve given the rights to the kingdom to is the one that’s going to hurt you more than anything else.” Wunsch would know. He sees it happen all the time.
Businesses call LuciData to investigate internal threats such as sabotage, IP theft, harassment, and employee misuse of computers (which can include, for instance, using the company computer for conducting a side business). Wunsch’s team of experts comes in after hours to find out what, if anything, is going on. “If it’s ever been on their computer screen, we can find it,” he says.
LuciData started out as a purely reactive investigation firm, responding to “internal triggers” such as tips and lawsuits. Now LuciData focuses on preventing insider threats. “Out of our investigations, we got asked back by all these companies to help stop it from happening again, so that spun off our internal-threat management division,” Wunsch says. LuciData’s preventive measures include installing software that alerts businesses to an internal problem or (a more expensive option) actually blocks a user from performing an illegal act.
Wunsch emphasizes the fact that “organizations of all sizes truly need our services.” One client company consisted of five people. “But at that small company, one employee ended up stealing about $150,000 in a year,” Wunsch says. The employee, who had access to the company books, set up an account for a nonexistent vendor.
Wunsch started out in the mid-’90s as a data recovery engineer for Eden Prairie–based Ontrack (now Kroll Ontrack). He later did network and IT security consulting around the Twin Cities and helped two other companies start internal forensics divisions. In 2002, he started LuciData, which now has 10 employees and offices in Denver, Des Moines, and (beginning in May) New York. LuciData clients include businesses, corporate counsel, and law firms around the country. Wunsch says it also works with many Fortune 500 companies, usually retraining employees and setting up new security measures because “traditional IT security today does absolutely nothing to detect the intellectual property leaking out.” He says his company has grown its revenues by 400 percent in each of the past two years.
“Frauds and insider risks hurt corporations from a financial perspective 35 times more than a hacking situation does,” he says. “The question is, are corporations really protecting and watching the right areas?”
