One way or another every assignment we undertake involves us working in cyberspace. The one thing we have learnt is that the risks we and our clients face in cyberspace are constantly changing as technology changes and by “changing” we mean increasing. We are also aware that many individuals and businesses we come across are far too complacent about the cyberspace risks they do too little to mitigate.

Laterally or metaphorically thinking, we doubt that you would take all your family on a long holiday and leave some of the doors and windows to your home open while you were away? Looking at some web-sites, that is what they look like to us – empty unguarded houses full of precious objects d’art and usually more besides!

In fact, in general, complacency has reached such a level that it pays criminals to constantly sweep through cyberspace using robots to look for anything they can exploit. What is more, some of these criminals earn much more than your typical FTSE 100 or SAP500 CEO.

We provide a suite of services as described below to help our clients mitigate the risks of operating in cyberspace whether they are sophisticated multinational businesses offering complex transactional services via the web or are simply individuals who wish to use the internet but given their personal circumstances wish to do so in a highly secure way.

We have only listed a small sample of our services all of which can be tailored to suit your precise requirements so please do not hesitate to contact us for exploratory talks on how we can help you.

Please note that our services are not available for those we suspect may be involved in criminal activities and we reserve the right to refuse to provide services to anyone for any reason or cause which we will not necessarily divulge.

For some interesting examples of what can go wrong in cyberspace whether you sit at home alone logged on via one computer or run a multinational business and think your IT guys know it all (or they tell you they do) we suggest you may like to be either amused or horrified by some news articles in this web-site: please see Recent password thefts & tips,  Events at Faire Sans Dire or Ever-increasing cyberspace risks in the News section of this web-site.

We can provide training or mentoring to assist you and/or your staff deal with most cyberspace topics whether or not you are in business. Training can be either on a one to one basis or for groups of your staff and will normally be undertaken at your premises usually using your equipment unless there is a need for secrecy.

Training programmes can be tailored to your precise needs and can be as short as one day or recurring on an open ended basis depending upon your needs. We can also second staff to work with your staff for periods usually not in excess of six months.

Were we to list the subjects we cover then this web-page would run on and on so we won’t. Needless to say the training topics and support services we can provide cover most aspects of internet, cyberspace and web-site security including encryption, mobile phone and related technologies.

If you are interested in obtaining our help why not browse through the few services we have listed below and see if they ring any bells as to those areas of specific interest or concern to you or your business. Obviously they are only examples but they may remind you just how much you think you know about operating in cyberspace and show you just how little you really know when given your personal circumstances it is critical that you get things right. Even something as supposedly simple as password control is rarely handled properly as noted in a recent article entitled Recent password thefts & tips in our News section.

By way of another example, most people who spend ages wiping their computers clean to remove all traces of say potentially defamatory, confidential, embarrassing or self-incriminating material they have written usually don’t completely remove without trace what they are deleting or wiping clean even though they are using a purportedly sophisticated program to do so. Some even forget they have it all on automatic back-up, on Dropbox or similar or even on their mobile phones!

In a similar vein many people believe that by using “in private browsing” they are browsing “in complete privacy”: that is not the case. For celebrities and high net worth individuals making such simple errors could prove costly and embarrassing in the long run.

We provide many services based on blockchain technology including advice and guidance on the usage of crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin. Our services range from simply securing a legal document and making it immutable to creating fully blown bespoke custom Blockchain applications. Our services include helping you prove immutably your ownership of data or establishing immutable audit trails within your business’s or organisation’s web-based processes. We can advise and help you with the use of artificial intelligence based on blockchain technology and many other cutting edge technologies that are evolving in this arena.

If you need new IT equipment specially programmed so that it is highly secure we can help you select what equipment you need and set it up from the outset: for example, if you are concerned that contact between you and your legal adviser about a new highly sensitive case may be intercepted we can provide you with specially programmed mobile phones and/or laptops to facilitate the provision of encrypted data between you by way of signed file exchange or other means such that it would be virtually impossible for anyone to eavesdrop or obtain and decrypt the data.

That way you can chat away or send emails anonymously all in real time within an encrypted environment without fear of eavesdropping or interception. We can provide virtually any equipment with encrypted hard drives, encrypted virtual drives or full system encryption.

We can provide you with secure virtual machine (sandbox) facilities which allow you to open untrustworthy files in most formats (eg doc, pdf, xls, ppt etc). If required we can analyse the files for you and open them in a secure virtual environment without fear of infecting your equipment, software or data.

In addition we can deactivate Word, PDF, Excel, PowerPoint and other types of documents that have unwanted embedded code within them which otherwise could easily harm you or your business by, for example, stealing the identity of the person opening the document. Virtual environments are ideal for defeating these sorts of attacks which otherwise might go unnoticed and the “disarming” of harmful documents can be carried out without disrupting your normal computer operations.

The secure virtual machine facilities can run on most modern computers and using them is similar to having a computer inside a computer with the Internet connection of the virtual machine being disabled or routed through an anonymous network.

Working in conjunction with reputable VPN suppliers, we can assist you to anonymously establish a VPN to prevent your Internet Service Provider (ISP) from logging what you are using your computer for etc and to ensure that your wireless network is secure.

We can also use the VPN to protect you from intercepts and add an extra layer of anonymity between you and those prowling cyberspace with bad intentions.

If you are dumping an old computer, mobile phone or other device we can permanently and irrecoverably delete all data thereon prior to disposal. Alternatively we can wipe equipment you use in a similar fashion so that any inconvenience to you is minimised and deal with shadow and back-up material similarly.

You may think you can do this yourself or that your IT employees are doing it properly. If required, we will prove to you at no charge that they are not before we undertake any assignment in this regard.

In a similar vein we can recover virtually any data from any hardware. We have staff who have worked at the cutting edge of this industry with the leading data recovery (and deletion) specialists in the world.

You may think your web-site is secure. We can test its security by simulated cyber attacks of all types and if required improve it. From our experience there are frequently gaping holes in many web-sites, particularly those that have outsourced the provision of transactional facilities. Why? Many haven’t diligently integrated the outsourced transactional facilities with the rest of the web-site and cracks and gaps in the firewalls can be easily exploited by criminals.

For reasons of confidentiality we can’t name those we know of but some prestigious web-sites which actually make their living solely in cyberspace with tens of millions of hits a day have had such weaknesses in their defences. Monies that should have gone to their accounts had been diverted to others in breathtakingly simple ways and in all the cases we identified they had no idea just how exposed they were.

The need for security is paramount to anyone who has a web-site whether or not transactions are processed through it. Imagine if your web-site was hijacked at the instructions of either a disaffected past or current employee or a relative (eg your spouse). They could no doubt easily place embarrassing, illegal and defamatory material on your web-site and you would be left with the cost of sorting out the mess.

Even if you could prove who did it (which would be far from easy) you, your lawyers and IT support team would have spent a fortune in time sorting out the mess and any court action might be counterproductive given the ongoing adverse publicity (which would also include the fact that you were running an insecure web-site). Furthermore, the person who was responsible may be of little means so hardly worth suing or pursuing for compensation.

Faire Sans Dire can provide many forensic IT services and forensic computer services in respect of criminal and civil proceedings including the examination and recovery of data. The breadth and depth of our skill sets in these technical areas where experience and expertise are essential are exceptional.

Over the years we have worked alongside many law enforcement agencies to forensically secure data which has led to the successful prosecution of criminals in a wide variety of cases. We have also helped law firms win civil cases whether in support of the plaintiffs or defendants. However, our charge out rates in these areas are but a fraction of those of the household name cavalry in the forensic IT service industry (like the big accounting firms). Why pay triple for the same quality of service which is just as reliable and persuasive in court?

We can analyse data from all types of networks, servers, computers, memory sticks, cell phones (including cell mast analysis), sat nav systems, digital cameras, vehicle computers, CCTV systems and “cloud” based or similar websites (not under your control). All the services we provide in this arena satisfy as a bare minimum the provisions of Section 9 Witness Statements under the Regulation of Investigative Powers Act (RIPA) 2000 guidelines.

We can also provide expert witnesses for both civil and criminal court proceedings. If required we can either help you in the recovery of data or do it for you. We also provide in depth training in these skills.

Apart from the foregoing IT and computer forensic services and the cyberspace security services explained under the headings above we also provide a wide range of ecommerce services. They include but are not limited to: web-site consulting, assessment, development, design, promotion and maintenance; database development and maintenance; document management and sharing systems development and maintenance; e-commerce support services; secure form design and integration; and the design and support of secure shopping cart and payment services.