Computer Security Expert Witnesses
When a network is breached, ransomware halts operations, or proprietary data leaves a company through an insider, the litigation that follows is rarely about the attacker alone; it is about whether the organizations responsible for defending the systems met their obligations. Companies sue managed security providers, software vendors, and integrators whose controls failed to prevent or detect an intrusion, payment processors and merchants contest responsibility for card data compromises, and operators of industrial and building systems pursue vendors after attacks on SCADA and control networks. Insurers and insureds dispute cyber coverage, while acquirers challenge representations about a target's security posture that unraveled after closing. In each matter, the central question is whether the security architecture, controls, and response measures at issue reflected what a reasonable organization or provider would have implemented at the time.
A computer security expert answers that question by reconstructing the incident and the defensive environment around it, using forensic images, logs, network captures, malware analysis, configuration records, and security assessments. That reconstruction can show how an attacker gained access and moved through the environment, which controls should have prevented or detected each step, and whether those controls were contractually required, standard in the industry, or both. The expert then addresses causation by distinguishing failures attributable to the defendant from the attacker's own sophistication, customer-side weaknesses, or vulnerabilities that were not reasonably knowable. Those findings support breach, negligence, indemnity, and coverage positions, frame damages tied to response costs, downtime, and lost business, and allow counsel to rebut an opposing expert who judges past security decisions by today's threat landscape.
Computer security encompasses cryptography, network defense, operating systems, software engineering, forensics, and risk management, so the right expert is one whose technical depth matches the systems and attack in dispute. The experts we present include a computer scientist with nearly five decades of experience in computer security, cryptography, and communications who has testified on computer security, an applied cryptography and algorithms specialist who has testified on operating systems, cryptography, and data storage technologies, and an IT security practitioner who has published on smart building security, SCADA security, and cyber warfare. Our network also includes researchers in intrusion detection, encryption protocols, and electronic voting systems, a computer and network forensics specialist, an information risk management and governance expert, and a former Fulbright scholar who has testified on privacy issues in computing. Drawing on more than 75,000 expert searches for litigators, Round Table Group can help you identify the computer security expert your matter requires. Let us help you get started by calling us at (202) 908-4500.
