Starrett Consulting Inc. – Experts in Electronic Evidence

A state-of-the-art investigations and consulting firm

WHO WE ARE

Information is power, and information is our business!

We are a competitive, Silicon-Valley based, full-service, “boutique” investigative, cyber security and risk-management consulting firm composed of best-of-breed affiliated professionals and strategic partners. And, since 90% of information is found in electronic form, and 80% of this data is “unstructured,” we employ cutting-edge resources to wrangle this data into useful and manageable information! As a top-priority, we ensure that this is done in a cost-effective, defensible manner.

WHERE WE FOCUS

Investigations

While there is no case that is not within our reach, our team is particularly well positioned to handle cases involving:

Intellectual Property Theft
Cyber Security Investigation and Risk
Internal Fraud, Third-Party Fraud, Bribery, Money Laundering, etc.
Conflicts of Interest (e.g. kickbacks, self-dealing, breach of fiduciary duty)
Due Diligence in Mergers & Acquisitions, Receiverships and Complex Transactions

We can also fully accommodate cases involving product liability, contract breaches, most torts, business disputes and class-action suits.

Compliance Consulting

We leverage many of the same tools other big consulting firms use to complete robust yet efficient compliance solutions. In particular, we use artificial intelligence and data science to help bring down the cost of a solution and shorten time-to-completion. Whether the need is for privacy or data protection regulation (e.g. GDPR), records retention, or virtually any other compliance need, we can bring the proper resources to bear on your problem using qualified experts and cutting-edge technologies. Low cost, defensible and understandable approaches remain our top priority. In particular, we leverage:

Search Technologies to help correlate and locate private, confidential and sensitive information
Graph Databases to help track the location of private, confidential and sensitive information
Information Extraction to capture and track private, confidential and sensitive information
Business Process Management (BPM) to best identify where and how compliance tools can be applied in an efficient and understandable manner
Encryption Technologies to protect private, confidential and sensitive information at rest and as it moves throughout the enterprise infrastructure
Use of Other Machine Learning, Predictive Analytics and Classification Technologies to ensure the most efficient solution possible

Post-Investigation Proactive Solutions

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!”

Despite a client’s best efforts, investigations often help uncover areas where proactive and preventive solutions can make for a more predictable tomorrow. Whether after an investigation or just as part of an exploratory audit, we can help clients optimize their risk-management model. This often includes solutions that make proper use of data science and predictive analytics in the areas of information governance, cyber security and electronic discovery. We are just as capable and competitive in consulting on proactive and preventive measures that maximize your revenue and profits!

DATA SCIENCE SOLUTIONS

Your electronic data is one of your most valuable assets so be sure to put that asset to work for you!

Data science, sometimes called “big data” analytics, adds a whole new set of tools to turbo-charge the capture of priceless insights and to handle vexing compliance needs. Data science is fast becoming the rule, rather than the exception. However, whether used in an investigation or as part of a proactive compliance system-infrastructure, these tools must be applied and leveraged in proper ways – often they are not needed or are not appropriate. We assimilate data-science tools on a case-by-case basis and always in a straightforward and understandable manner. We then work with our client to establish the return on investment that comes from the power these tools bring. We are uniquely qualified to bring this exciting and progressive area of technology to you!

ABOUT US

We are a group of best-of-breed strategic partners focused on delivering intelligence and insights which are based on the needs of our clients.We are a full-service investigative firm with competitive advantages in the use of tools and applications that find order and clarity in electronic data. After an initial consultation, we assemble an appropriate team of top-level professionals to effectively and efficiently match a client’s needs.

WHO WE SERVE

We directly serve companies, their counsel and stakeholders as a full-service investigations and consulting firm.

We provide services to investigative agencies, accounting firms and law firms to help them complete their investigative / consultation solutions, particularly where electronic evidence and data science is involved.

We can work in most industries and professional verticals and maintain global reach through an extended network of international affiliates.

We tend to focus on the “middle market” where larger consulting firms are not always a good fit.

OUR DATA SCIENCE AND "BIG DATA" ANALYTICS SOLUTIONS

Use of data science for most organizations is not a discretionary topic – it is vital to their success and competitive advantage in many areas. This is particularly true in the context of investigations, cyber risk and compliance solutions and other legal matter. Only firms with strong legal-domain knowledge coupled with expert-level capabilities in electronic evidence and data science are able to successfully manage a matter or solution in a timely and cost-effective manner. Use of statistics, unsupervised learning, predictive analytics and other data mining tools are leveraged to find the gold otherwise lost in data.

Working with our client and team, we leverage a 3-step, sequential process for all matters and consultations involving electronic data:

First, determine all relevant legal, policy, compliance and regulatory issues as well as client priorities and goals.
Establish and identify the electronic data necessary to accommodate goals in step #1.
Then, and only after completion of step #2, determine if and how data-science tools may add value – very often, this will be the case.

This 3-step process is the only way that cases involving electronic data and data science can be handled. In our experience, any other approach leads to misapplication of data-science tools.

Advanced Data Analytics

There are often occasions where boilerplate, pre-configured data-analytics tools do not provide the fine-grained level of control needed to truly glean as much useful information as possible from data. Accordingly, we use API’s offered by state-of-the-art open-source and commercial applications to tailor a solution specifically to the needs at hand. We find that the following technologies are most useful in investigations and compliance solutions to find and utilize the most critical information quickly and efficiently. These tools are often used together and in an iterative fashion to maximize results:

Information Retrieval

Makes use of search technologies to identify relevant information in millions of records across very diverse data sets, e.g. emails, spreadsheets, social media, business records, web data, database records, etc.

Information Extraction

Uses machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques to extract previously unidentified people, locations, associations, entities, account numbers and nearly one thousand other entity-types from data. Similar techniques extract keywords, concepts, sentiments and other “emotions” to help narrow data to particular topics, events or groups.

Graph Databases and Visualization

Finds key relationships, sequences and anomalies across transactional data, social media, text files and other structured or unstructured data.

Timeline / Time Series Analysis

Fleshes out and refines chronologies of events to help tell the story behind the truth.

Geolocation Analysis

Brings context to the locations of events and entities as gleaned from large numbers of records.

Correlation Analysis

Establishes correlations among millions of facts to drill down on possible causes and relationships.

Preventive, Proactive Services

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!”

Patterns, facts, statistical information and other metrics discovered during our initial investigations can be used directly in predictive models within an enterprise infrastructure to detect, prevent and mitigate unwanted activity. We are uniquely qualified to provide this type of consulting and advice.