As Protek International, Inc. marks its 20th year serving clients in the digital forensics, cybersecurity and eDiscovery realm, we’re indulging ourselves in a moment of reflection on our journey and the path we’re forging into the future. We are proud to have helped guide hundreds of clients – from large corporations and international law firms to small businesses and solo practitioners – through complex cyber investigative and legal challenges. At the same time, we’re as prepared as ever to continue to meet client needs, particularly as technology and the laws around it change and evolve.
The Birth of Protek International
Although Protek was founded in 2005, our story begins much earlier. In the mid-1990s digital technologies were advancing into seemingly every corner of our lives. The World Wide Web was fast becoming the go-to source for information, while email emerged as a popular means of communication. At the same time, cell phones began their march toward eventual ubiquity, allowing people to remain connected while on-the-go. Unfortunately, with these advances in technology came new opportunities for people to commit cyber crimes as well as traditional crimes, but now facilitated through a host of ever-emerging technologies.
In 1999, Protek co-founder Keith Chval was tapped by Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan to envision and ultimately form and run the High Tech Crimes Bureau (“HTCB”), one of the first in the country to integrate prosecutors, investigators, and civilian forensic examiners within a single unit. Within the HTCB were three regional forensics labs as well as a training institute serving local, state, and federal prosecutors and investigators across the state. During Chval’s eight years at the helm of the HTCB it achieved a remarkable 100% conviction rate.
Chval’s time at the HTCB positioned him as one of the pioneering attorneys in the nation. He and his colleagues were continually in the thick of things, picking apart the latest cyber schemes and myriad forms of electronic evidence to lead investigations and ultimately provide compelling evidence at trial.
From this masterclass-like experience in cyber investigations and electronic evidence emerged the blueprint for much of what would become Protek International, Inc. and its first in class Digital Forensics, Cyber Security, and eDiscovery services as co-founded by Chval and Daniel Bellich, a former decorated F.B.I. Supervisory Special Agent. The vision then is the same as it is today: apply unsurpassed expertise to deliver precision in Digital Forensics and eDiscovery services with a client-centric focus and emphasis on integrity and excellence.
The Evolution of Electronic Evidence, Digital Forensics, and eDiscovery
Pioneering Foundations of Digital Forensics: From Desktop Data to Mobile Evidence (2005–2009)
In the early years of digital forensics, Protek’s examinations and analysis mainly focused on the electronic evidence found on laptop and desktop hard drives: user files, recovered deleted data, operating system artifacts and other hidden information that was critical to investigations and litigation. This foundational work helped to establish core techniques that would go on to support more complex investigations in the years to come. The advent of smartphones, beginning with the launch of the iPhone in 2007, marked a new era in digital technology that placed mobile devices as an important source of electronic evidence. These early developments set the stage for the rapid evolution of the digital forensics field, and it continues to inform the fundamentals of how Protek examiners approach their craft today.
Embracing the Mobile Revolution: Innovating for a Digital Age (2010–2012)
By 2010, mobile devices were in everyone’s hands. Protek quickly adapted to this shift by investing heavily in expertise and technologies to address the new challenges in investigations and litigation. Our early innovations with mobile device forensics and eDiscovery enabled us to put crucial data like text messages, hidden app content, and geolocation analysis in the hands of our clients. The rise of encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp also reshaped the forensic landscape and presented new challenges in accessing and interpreting digital evidence. Despite these complexities, Protek’s advanced and innovative techniques ensured we delivered valuable evidence and analysis, helping clients build stronger cases and persuasively present critical evidence at trial through our experts’ testimony.
Unlocking Digital Footprints in the Cloud and Social Media Era (2013-2015)
By the mid-2000s, cloud storage had become ubiquitous as consumer-friendly apps like Dropbox and Google Docs made it easy to store and sync data across multiple devices. Meanwhile, the increasing popularity of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram made them critical sources of digital evidence. Protek developed expertise in using these platforms to find and access valuable digital traces of user activity, especially in cases related to intellectual property and internal investigations.Our team skillfully navigated the complexities of preserving and analyzing these new forms of data while ensuring compliance with evolving privacy laws.
Staying Ahead of the Cyber Threats: Innovating Defense Against Ransomware and IP Theft (2016–2020)
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As cyber threats to enterprises and individuals become more sophisticated and widespread, Protek has continually expanded its capabilities. We have enhanced our ability to combat and investigate risks like advanced persistent threats (APTs), ransomware, and social engineering attacks.To equip our clients to stay ahead of and respond to these evolving threats, we integrated advanced, specialized tools and machine learning into our forensic toolkit, allowing us to rapidly analyze varied datasets to identify critical patterns and anomalies. By leveraging advanced technologies through our team’s expertise to detect anomalies and uncover subtle indicators within digital evidence, Protek has revolutionized investigative processes, providing faster, more accurate insights and ultimately helping our clients better protect their organizations from the most complex cyber threats.
Navigating the New Normal: Mastering Cloud and Collaboration Platform Forensics in a Remote World (2021–2025)
The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically accelerated the shift to remote work. This change introduced new types and locations of electronic evidence relevant to investigations and litigation, especially within cloud-based platforms like Microsoft O365, Dropbox, and Zoom. Anticipating the challenges to come, Protek swiftly adapted our strategies, implementing then-emerging tools and methods to allow us to quickly forensically collect these new forms of investigation-critical electronic evidence from their respective cloud-repositories. Our continuing commitment to R&D, advanced training, and cutting-edge analysis tools delivered timely and expert investigative and analysis results to our clients, enabling them to fully leverage these new productivity technologies with the reassurance that we had them covered on should a bad actor attempt to put perceived vulnerabilities to nefarious purposes.
Future of Electronic Evidence, Investigations, and Litigation
With cloud-based resources and storage, wi-fi connectivity, and mobile devices all coming into their own over the past 20 years, the digital forensics and eDiscovery landscape
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looks nothing like it did at Protek’s 2005 founding. Over the decades, Protek not only honed its expertise on current technologies and practices, but aggressively evolved, such that clients confidently call on us today, whether it be for “old school” forensics and eDiscovery services on laptops and desktops, or to tackle electronic evidence that lurks in mobile devices, cloud utility metadata and logs, or the latest IoT device.
And the future? Who knows what will shift the electronic evidence and investigation landscape in 5, 10, or 20 years. There’s no doubt that AI will have significant impacts. What else might emerge? Perhaps the application of quantum computing or 3D spatial computing. Only the future knows, as they say. But at Protek, what we do know is that we will be there, providing expert services every step of the way. We’ll also be looking around the corner as we go, staying a step ahead of the next developments so we can confidently… Securing Your Edge.
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