Computer forensic investigation used to uncover tracks in Citibank breach

In a development on the latest scandal to rock Singapore’s corporate world, an ex-Citibank employee has been slapped with a hefty $40,000 fine for breaching bank and customer confidentiality. Valarie Lim, then a service relationship manager with Citibank, together with her superior who were both intending to ‘jump ship’ to UBS, was found guilty of retrieving confidential information from the bank’s computer database and then destroying the stolen documents in a desperate attempt to cover her tracks.

Her partner in crime Low Siok Liang had earlier been fined $173,000 on 22 similar charges, while four other employees are still being investigated.

This high-profile case which has garnered much media publicity has shocked the banking community, and brings to our attention the rise of such malicious data theft cases. In what could be a chain reaction spurred by the bleak economic situation, there has been an increase in white-collar cybercrime like staff stealing data or computer fraud. Retrenched or dismissed employees may take the opportunity to obtain valuable company information before they leave the company, especially when such information may open employment opportunities in competing firms.

In order to protect their interests, companies cannot afford to let their guard down. Fortunately, data theft or other forms of cybercrime can be verified by companies, as employees who do so inadvertently leave traces of evidence in their computers and in the cyber world, be it email communications or files exchanged.

In such cases, a computer forensics investigation will be able to expose the tracks of a breach. Through a detailed process, professional computer forensic investigators will be able to retrieve the consequential data. This could be in the form of web history, online transactions or system logs among others and could come from even physically corrupted data media, files corrupted by a virus attack or crashed hard disks. In this Citibank case, computer forensics was used to trace the two emails containing six confidential files Lim sent out to her personal e-mail account. It was even traced that she had logged into Citibank’s system to retrieve and print out information on three Citigold customers.

Companies risk too much being vulnerable to such threats. As soon as they suspect a breach, they should enlist the help of a qualified and professional computer forensics specialist to verify their suspicion. There should be NO attempts carry out any in house investigation without proper techniques and expertise. Evidence could be easily destroyed or altered by just booting up the suspected computer, as it over-writes critical information such as time-stamps.

Adroit Data Recovery Centre (ADRC) Pte Ltd is South East Asia’s leading data recovery centre equipped with the first Class 100 clean laboratory in Singapore. It is one of the few firms that is both qualified and equipped to setup, acquire and collect the digital evidence from all kinds of working or damaged media while observing the strictest process of computer forensic investigation.

ADRC’s team of qualified forensic experts is also equipped with the technical expertise of networking, system security and cryptography in order to perform a complete investigation. Moreover, ADRC is able to provide court-ready reporting of digital evidence for civil and criminal litigation through the installation of rigorous forensic methodologies in order to identify, acquire, preserve, analyze and document digital data (electronically stored information) for use as evidence in court or other legal or administrative proceedings.