Litigation Exposure

5 automated security scanners

Expert Witness Testimony

Purpose: The Expert_Witness_Testimony Scanner is designed to uncover hidden vulnerabilities and potential risks in public records and OSINT sources by detecting breaches, technology stack disclosures, certification claims, security configuration details, and control effectiveness revelations. This tool aims to provide insights into the company’s security posture and highlight areas that may pose a risk during litigation or regulatory investigations.

What It Detects:

Breach Mentions: Identifies mentions of data breaches, security incidents, unauthorized access, and compromised systems in public records and OSINT sources.
Technology Stack Disclosure: Detects the disclosure of specific technology stacks used by the company, such as AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, Terraform, Ansible, Docker, Splunk, Datadog, or Elastic.
Certification Claims: Identifies claims related to various certifications and compliance standards including SOC 2 (Type 1/2), ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and HIPAA compliance.
Security Configuration Details: Detects detailed information about firewall rules, encryption settings, and access controls that could indicate effective or ineffective security practices.
Control Effectiveness Revelations: Identifies statements regarding the effectiveness of security controls and policies within the organization.

Inputs Required:

domain (string): The primary domain to analyze, such as acme.com, which helps in searching for incident disclosures on the company’s website.
company_name (string): The name of the company, used for statement searching and identifying relevant data breaches or security incidents mentioned about the organization.

Business Impact: This scanner is crucial for organizations looking to proactively identify potential litigation risks by uncovering hidden vulnerabilities in their public records and OSINT sources. It helps in assessing the effectiveness of existing security controls and provides insights that can be instrumental during legal disputes where detailed information about a company’s practices might become key evidence.

Risk Levels:

Critical: Findings such as explicit mentions of data breaches or unauthorized access could lead to critical risks, potentially affecting sensitive information and regulatory compliance.
High: Disclosure of specific technology stacks or certifications that are crucial for certain industries can pose high risk if not properly managed.
Medium: Less severe but still significant risks include general security configuration issues or incomplete disclosures about control effectiveness which could be exploited by adversaries.
Low: Informal findings such as generic mentions without detailed context might indicate lower risk unless they pertain to critical systems or highly sensitive information.
Info: These are generally less impactful and typically provide supplementary information that aids in understanding the broader security posture of the organization.

Example Findings:

The scanner could flag a mention of “data breach” in a company’s public blog, indicating potential exposure to unauthorized access.
A disclosure about using AWS without proper encryption settings might be flagged as high risk due to compliance issues and potential for data loss during transit or storage.

Class Action Disclosure

Purpose: The Class_Action_Disclosure Scanner is designed to assist in understanding the impact of a security incident by analyzing publicly available information from various sources such as GitHub repositories, news articles, job boards, and SEC filings. This tool helps identify breach impact details, affected system scope, timeline revelations, certification claims, and gathers public records for comprehensive analysis.

What It Detects:

Breach Impact Details: Identifies mentions of data breaches, security incidents, unauthorized access, and compromised systems using patterns like data\s+breach, security\s+incident, unauthorized\s+access, and compromised.
Affected System Scope: Discovers technology stacks used by the company that might have been affected through patterns such as experience\s+with\s+(aws|azure|gcp|kubernetes), proficiency\s+in\s+(terraform|ansible|docker), and knowledge\s+of\s+(splunk|datadog|elastic).
Timeline Revelations: Extracts timelines related to the breach, including when it was discovered and reported using phrases like we were|we have been|we discovered|we learned|we identified followed by terms related to incidents or breaches.
Certification Claims: Identifies claims of security certifications that might be relevant to the breach through patterns such as soc\s*2\s*(?:type\s*[12i]+)?, iso\s*27001, pci[\\s-]*dss, and hipaa\s*compliant.
Public Records and OSINT: Gathers information from public records, GitHub repositories, news articles, job boards, and SEC filings to provide a comprehensive view of the breach impact.

Inputs Required:

domain (string): The primary domain to analyze, e.g., acme.com.
company_name (string): The company name for statement searching, e.g., “Acme Corporation”.

Business Impact: This scanner is crucial as it helps in assessing the severity and scope of a security incident by analyzing publicly available data. It provides insights into the affected systems, potential breach details, and any related certifications that might be impacted, aiding in decision-making processes for stakeholders.

Risk Levels:

Critical: Conditions where there is clear evidence of unauthorized access to sensitive information or significant disruption to business operations.
High: Conditions where data breaches have occurred with minimal impact on critical systems but still pose a risk if not addressed promptly.
Medium: Conditions where the breach might affect non-critical areas, requiring immediate attention but not threatening overall stability.
Low: Informational findings that do not directly impact security or operations significantly.
Info: General information gathering without significant security implications.

If specific risk levels are not detailed in the README, they have been inferred based on typical severity assessments for breach analysis tools.

Example Findings:

“We discovered a data breach on our system.” - This finding indicates a critical issue where sensitive information has been compromised.
“Experience with AWS and Azure.” - This finding suggests a high risk as the company’s technology stack includes major cloud platforms, which could lead to significant operational disruptions if not properly secured.

E Discovery Artifacts

Purpose: The E_Discovery_Artifacts Scanner is designed to identify potential legal exposure risks related to improper handling or disclosure of sensitive information by analyzing publicly available data sources such as GitHub repositories, certificate transparency logs, breach history databases, news articles, job boards, and SEC filings. This tool helps organizations detect the presence of database extracts, email archives, and communication records that might indicate a risk of data breaches or unauthorized access.

What It Detects:

Database Extracts: Identifies mentions of database dumps or extracts in public repositories, looking for patterns like “database dump”, “extracted data”, “data leak”.
Email Archives: Searches for email archive files or mentions of email leaks, including patterns such as “email archive”, “leaked emails”, “email dump”.
Communication Records: Detects references to communication logs, chat records, or other forms of internal communications, looking for patterns like “communication log”, “chat record”, “internal messages”.
Breach Mentions: Identifies mentions of data breaches, security incidents, unauthorized access, and compromised data, including phrases such as “data breach”, “security incident”, “unauthorized access”, “compromised”.
Tech Stack Disclosure: Detects technology stack disclosures that might indicate the use of sensitive systems or configurations, including patterns like “experience with aws|azure|gcp|kubernetes”, “proficiency in terraform|ansible|docker”, “knowledge of splunk|datadog|elastic”.

Inputs Required:

domain (string): Primary domain to analyze (e.g., acme.com).
company_name (string): Company name for statement searching (e.g., “Acme Corporation”).

Business Impact: This scanner is crucial as it helps organizations proactively identify and mitigate risks associated with improper handling or disclosure of sensitive information, which can lead to legal repercussions, financial loss, and damage to reputation.

Risk Levels:

Critical: Conditions that directly indicate significant security incidents such as data breaches, unauthorized access, or major system vulnerabilities should be considered critical.
High: Conditions indicating high risk such as widespread exposure of sensitive information through public repositories or mentions in prominent news articles are classified as high.
Medium: Conditions suggesting medium risk include internal communications discussing potential issues that might escalate into significant incidents.
Low: Informal references to technology stack usage can be considered low-level risks, unless they indicate specific exposure to sensitive systems.
Info: General mentions of company activities or technology use without specific details indicating immediate concern are classified as informational.

Example Findings:

“Security incident involving unauthorized access to sensitive data.” - Indicates a significant breach where unauthorized individuals gained access to the organization’s sensitive information.
“Database dump found in public repository.” - Points to potential exposure of confidential database contents through an unsecure GitHub repository.

This structured approach helps stakeholders understand the severity and implications of each detected artifact, enabling informed decision-making for remediation and preventive measures.

Settlement Agreement Details

Purpose: The Settlement Agreement Details Scanner is designed to analyze legal settlement agreements in order to identify and extract specific security practices, control requirements, testing obligations, compliance with standards, and breach response plans. This tool helps organizations understand the security commitments they have made as part of their legal settlements by scanning through SEC filings for relevant details.

What It Detects:

Security Practice Commitments: The scanner looks for explicit mentions of security practices such as penetration testing, vulnerability assessments, or security audits.
Control Implementation Requirements: It checks for specified controls that the company must implement, including firewall deployment, encryption standards, and access control policies.
Testing Obligations: The scanner verifies requirements for regular security testing, such as code reviews, red teaming exercises, or continuous monitoring.
Compliance with Standards: It detects references to compliance with specific standards like SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and HIPAA.
Breach Response Plans: The scanner flags mentions of breach response plans, including incident response, data protection measures, or communication protocols.

Inputs Required:

Domain (string): This is the primary domain to be analyzed, such as acme.com.
Company Name (string): This refers to the company name for which statements are being searched, e.g., “Acme Corporation.”

Business Impact: Identifying security commitments in legal settlements is crucial as it directly impacts an organization’s cybersecurity posture and compliance obligations. Understanding these requirements helps companies ensure they meet regulatory standards and contractual security expectations, thereby mitigating potential risks associated with non-compliance.

Risk Levels:

Critical: Conditions that would lead to critical risk include explicit mentions of mandatory security practices or controls not currently implemented by the company.
High: High-risk conditions involve significant gaps in compliance with established security standards and protocols, potentially leading to substantial legal and operational risks.
Medium: Medium-risk conditions pertain to notable deviations from recommended security practices that could lead to moderate risk if left unaddressed.
Low: Low-risk conditions are those where minor non-compliance might exist but does not significantly impact the overall cybersecurity posture or compliance with agreements.
Info: Informational findings include general mentions of security protocols and controls without specific details on implementation status or gaps.

Example Findings:

The scanner flagged a mention of “penetration testing” in the settlement agreement, indicating an explicit commitment to this security practice.
A reference was found to “firewall deployment,” which is identified as a control requirement that needs immediate attention for compliance with the legal settlement terms.

Court Filing Monitoring

Purpose: The Court Filing Monitoring Scanner is designed to detect potential litigation exposure by monitoring recent filings at the SEC for companies associated with a given domain. This helps in assessing legal risks and ensuring compliance.

What It Detects:

Company Ticker Matching: Identifies if any company tickers match keywords derived from the domain or if the domain’s base name is found within the company titles.
Recent SEC Filings: Monitors recent filings of types such as 8-K, 10-K, and DEF 14A for potential litigation indicators, filtering to those made within the last two years.
Litigation Risk Analysis: Calculates a score based on recent activity related to litigation forms and assigns a risk level (low, medium, high) based on the analysis of filings.

Inputs Required:

domain (string): Primary domain to analyze (e.g., acme.com)

Business Impact: This scanner is crucial for legal departments and compliance teams as it helps in identifying potential litigation risks associated with companies within a specific domain, enabling proactive risk management and regulatory compliance.

Risk Levels:

Critical: A critical risk level indicates that there are immediate concerns such as high volumes of recent 8-K or DEF 14A filings indicating significant legal activity.
High: High risk levels indicate potential issues like a notable increase in specific litigation forms within the last two years, suggesting active litigation risks.
Medium: Medium risk levels suggest moderate to low but still concerning litigation indicators such as recent form types indicative of ongoing or pending legal matters.
Low: Low risk levels may include findings that are not directly related to active litigation but could be precursors or signs of future issues, requiring continued monitoring and review.
Info: Informational findings provide context on normal activity for comparison purposes but do not indicate immediate risks.

Example Findings: The scanner might flag instances where a company’s ticker matches the domain name or keywords related to litigation, or identify recent filings that suggest ongoing legal disputes or regulatory investigations.