Corporate investigators face new challenges every day. In addition to 'classical' concerns (such as data leakages, business espionage, fraud, and other forms of ‘white collar crime’) new ones emerge regularly. For instance, both the general public and corporate executives nowadays recognize bullying as a problem that must be taken seriously. Companies that fail to address this challenge in a proper fashion inevitably incur severe risks ranging from productivity losses to reputation damage and even lawsuits.
The sheer scale of this issue should not be underestimated. Let’s look at the American case as an example. After all, the US shares numerous negative issues with other developed and developing countries. And the dimensions are truly astonishing when it comes to bullying.
Workplace Bullying Problem
According to the Workplace Bullying Institute and its 2017 Survey, 19% of Americans are currently bullied at work. What is even worse, most victims belong to disadvantaged groups. 66% of them are female. 25% are Hispanics. In other words, bullying is a wide-spread destructive phenomenon which is often neglected: 46% of investigations ended without any positive outcomes.
Which kind of extra burden could bullying generate? The WBI names a few:
- Increased staff turnover rates
- Increased absenteeism
- Spending on litigation and settlements
- Employee insurance claims
- A wide range of lost business opportunities
With this fact in mind, businesses try to react to these new threats. Special officers are appointed. Corporate policies are altered. Monitoring systems are introduced. However, the main issue here is that this problem is extremely ‘informal’ and ‘hazy’. It is extremely difficult to assess and evaluate each bullying situation without examining its background in its integrity. Which in turn is also problematic owing to the following characteristics:
- Asymmetry of power or group intimidation. People normally suffer either from a superior or from a group of colleagues. Both variants constitute a problem in terms of reporting, obtaining reliable data, and transparency.
- Normally, bullying implies a lasting process, not a single act. So, an entire pattern must be investigated in order to make things clear in a given case.
- Repetition. Quite often, investigators need to examine multiple cases with numerous victims suffering from the same person or group.
- Complex character which manifests itself in various acts committed in different locations. As a result, companies may need big groups of investigators.
- Mutual cover-up which leads not only to conspiracies of silence but also to deliberate destruction of digital evidence.
How Belkasoft Evidence Center Could Help You Fight Bullying
Correspondingly, corporate investigators need an effective tool to monitor the situation, reveal patterns of corporate misconduct, and act accordingly. And Belkasoft does have something to offer in this respect.
- Remote acquisition against asymmetry of power and group intimidation: with BEC at your disposal you can aquire images of PCs, devices, and RAM belonging to suspicious managers or groups. So, it will be always possible to get an insight into your workplace climate, both remotely and secretly.
- Visualization via Connection Graph to investigate patterns of behavior over a certain period and understand lasting processes and actors involved.
- Cross-Case Search that enables you to detect links between your current cases and older ones and to identify potential bullies.
- Team Edition capable of uniting numerous investigators that work on complex cases.
- Data carving to deal with mutual cover-up and deliberate data deletion.
To sum up: if you view workplace bullying as a potential threat, Belkasoft Evidence Center is your direction to go.
In Part 2 you will learn more about BEC practical capabilities and a real life case of investigating workplace bullying with it.
Find out more about various types of digital forensic evidence available on users' PC and laptop computers, and methods of retrieving such evidence in our article Retrieving Digital Evidence: Methods, Techniques and Issues