Case Study

An insider threat can destroy your business! Here is a case study where Hawaii PI was called in to manage a horrendous security breach.

It all started when the chief technology officer, the webmaster for this corporation decided to do a bit of surfing around the corporate Internet.

In the course of researching employees salaries on one of the accounting servers, this Sys Admin discovered that he was making less money then one of his friends who had a much less important position.

The CTO confronted the CEO asking him why he was being paid less money then his friend.

The CEO became angry and chastised his CTO for accessing the accounting server for which he had no authority. The CTO demanded a raise and the tone of the conversation became much more confrontational. The CEO told the CTO he would not be receiving a raise and he would be discussing the breach of the accounting server by the CTO with the company’s attorneys.

The CTO quit on the spot and stormed out of the CEO’s office. The CTO then was escorted to his office where he grabbed his personal items and then left the building.

Over that following weekend the CTO logged in to the corporate servers and deleted everything. He then changed the DNS record at Network Solutions so that the entire company’s email went down. It was at this point in this internal nightmare breach that Hawaii PI was called in to assist.

Our incident response team immediately went into action. We were able to recover all of the deleted material from the corporate servers. Over the next week we hardened the corporate network and eliminated any further threats from this individual.

We also contacted the cyber squad of the FBI who immediately jumped on the case.

In the end, Hawaii PI was able to restore stability and integrity back to the company’a network.


Here’s what the company’s CIO had to say about Hawaii PI after our Team completed its work:


“Hi Kawika,
I really appreciate all that you have done for us. Even though we had not seen/spoken with each other for a few years, there was no hesitation when I called as you rearranged your schedule to meet with us the next day and had your team ready to come in that very Saturday. It was your quick action that helped us preserve the evidence timely before the logs were overwritten. You stayed with us as much as you could providing guidance even though it was difficult for you at times.I know that we may meet up again throughout the course of the investigation but I just wanted to acknowledge your efforts in helping us get through this very trying time. We would not have been able to accomplish all of the evidence gathering and forensics without you and your team. A BIG Mahalo to you and your team!”