Magnet Forensics finds room to grow in private sector
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Magnet Forensics got its start providing crime-fighting technology to traditional law enforcement agencies around the world. But over the past year, as the pandemic has forced millions of people to work from home and online activity has soared, the Waterloo, Ont.based company has been watching a shift in strategy into the corporate world pay off.
It turns out that the same sorts of digital crime-fighting tools used to investigate everything from the Boston Marathon bombing to the Quebec mosque shooting are also adept at solving instances of fraud, IP theft and employee misconduct, something that has helped Magnet grow its private-sector business to about 1,500 corporate clients, including more than half of the Fortune 100 companies.
“Our evolution into the corporate market was a natural one,” chief executive Adam Belsher said in an interview. “Many corporate cybercrime investigators often begin their careers in law enforcement. When they make the move to the private sector, they want to continue to use the tools they trust. This dynamic, along with the continued increase in cybercrime, pulled us into the corporate market.”
Magnet Forensics has carved out a name for itself in the cybercrime world over the past decade, having formed in 2009 following a chance meeting between a pair of men in an accountant’s office in Ontario.
Jad Saliba, a Waterloo regional Police officer with a background in software design, had been working in his spare time to create forensics tools that he and his colleagues could use to help discover and analyze the types of digital evidence increasingly being generated by the growth of social media and the dark web.
he bumped into Belsher, a veteran business executive coming off a 13-year stint at Blackberry Ltd., and everything suddenly clicked. The pair had a perfect mix of grounded experience and business savvy, and they worked together to create a digital forensics company that would swell to some 275 employees over the next decade by providing powerful, accessible digital tools to law enforcement agencies.
digital forensics is a good business to be in these days. The worldwide market projects to expand to nearly us$6.5 billion in revenue by 2025, from $3.76 billion in 2019, according to a study released in November by Market Insight reports.
The report notes there are several players dominating the consulting market, including Magnet Forensics, Oxygen Forensics Inc. in Alexandria, Va., and Waterloo-based Opentext Corp.
Magnet Forensics’ growth into the private sector has not been slowed during the recent economic lockdowns and restrictions. If anything, the pandemic has placed a spotlight on growing digital security threats.
“COVID-19 has exacerbated the digital evidence challenge,” Belsher said. “More employees are working from home through the pandemic. They’re accessing critical company information on insecure devices that are connected to unsecure networks, which provides criminals with a new attack vector.”
That trend presents challenges for both law enforcement and corporations alike, something Magnet Forensics is addressing.
Its software engineers and criminal experts have been coming up with solutions to address needs specific to the private sector, such as the ability to covertly and remotely acquire data from devices even when they aren’t connected to corporate networks, as well as collect data from popular cloud-based communication services such as Microsoft Teams and Slack.
Much like the law enforcement version of these tools, they have been designed with non-technical users — such as human resource executives — in mind.
The new product was branded Magnet Axiom Cyber, and it’s proven popular among corporate cybercrime investigators working cases big and small.
For example, one of the largest retailers in the united States used it to quickly trace the roots of a sophisticated phishing attack targeting its employees, while a Fortune 500 financial services firm used it to find evidence in a case of employee harassment.
Belsher said Magnet Axiom Cyber isn’t just being used to investigate crime, but also for prevention.
“Organizations are taking a more proactive stance and using our products to hunt for potential threats on their network with the goal of improving their defences,” he said.
With no shortage of demand, the company has resumed its strategy for steady growth — which has been at around 30 per cent on a compound annual basis over the past three years — and has plans to continue hiring throughout 2021.
But growth in corporate clients hasn’t caused Magnet Forensics to give up its founding mission to aid law enforcement. The pandemic has resulted in an even greater need for reliable digital forensics in several types of police investigations.
“With more people online, including children, there has been an increase in cyber-enabled crimes such as child exploitation,” Belsher said, noting that in Canada reports of online child exploitation on cybertip.ca — the national tip line for cases of child sexual exploitation — are up 88 per cent since April 2020.
That’s why Belsher and his team are as passionate as ever about providing the tools police need to solve crimes and collect digital evidence for prosecution.
“Magnet Forensics’ origins and mission to this day are tied to our roots in law enforcement and helping in the pursuit of justice,” Belsher said.