UBIC Launches “Lit i View Xaminer™"

Australasia News

25
Sep
2013

Editor

Japan’s First Forensic Software Equipped with Predictive Coding Technology

UBIC, Inc., a provider of strategic international litigation support through CJK TAR™(Technology Assisted Review) and forensic solutions, has launched a new business aimed towards investigation and regulatory authorities, consisting of the next-generation forensic software, Lit i View Xaminer™ (Xaminer) for gathering and analyzing electronic data in criminal investigations, and will commence full-scale provision of the software to the police and other government agencies from September 2013.

Xaminer software combines the views and requests from various investigating authorities in Japan with UBIC’s many years of experience in forensic investigations. It is the first forensic tool in Japan to be equipped with state-of-the-art predictive coding technology based on business intelligence, and fine-tuned for Asian languages (Japanese, Korean, and Chinese) as well. It is the first full-scale forensic tool produced in Japan. The price of the software depends on the data volume and is available upon request.

Digital forensics is widely used by the investigating and regulatory authorities in the United States including the FBI and the CIA, the police, and the military. The discovery in October 2001 of the accounting fraud by Enron highlighted its importance and currently most vendors are offering more sophisticated forensic tools that satisfy the requirements of the investigating authorities.

In Japan too, cybercrime has been increasing rapidly in recent years. For example, there was an incident involving a leading IT company in 2006 in which the restoration and analysis of deleted e-mails became controversial and in 2009 there was another incident in which an employee of a leading financial institution removed personal information from a customer database and sold it, so there have been calls for the strengthening of digital forensics. However, the current situation is that due to the lack of functions in the forensic tools available, Asia has been lagging behind North America and Europe.

In March 2010, UBIC, the only comprehensive eDiscovery support company in Japan, developed the proprietary, advanced (the work necessary to prepare for the presentation of evidence) support system, Lit i View and rolled out a service offering the preservation, investigation, and analysis of electronic data evidence in international litigation. Subsequently, it further “enhanced” the tool in order to develop the next-generation forensic software, Xaminer, which handles the increasingly bloated volumes of data and ever increasing corporate fraud and cybercrime incidents.

“UBIC is committed to investing in product development with new and advanced technology features to aid the investigators in pursuit of cyber criminals in the digital world”, quoted Mr. Masahiro Morimoto, co-founder & CEO, UBIC, Inc. “Our goal is always to strive for innovative ideas to provide cost efficient and reliable solutions for our clients”.

There are two development themes advocated by UBIC through its exchange of views with the various Asian domestic investigating authorities in charge of cybercrime: (i) strengthening of search functions capable of handling Japanese and other Asian languages and (ii) use predictive coding to dramatically reduce the time and increase the success rate of the investigations.

Highlights of the Xaminer product features include but not limited to the following: 

• Data Collection
• Search Function Early Case Assessment
• Investigation View
• Parallel Investigation by Multiple User
• Advanced Predictive Coding

In criminal investigations, the biggest challenge for the investigators is the time pressure. In Japan, the police are required by law to hold a suspect no more than 48 hours while processing the evidence. It is a huge challenge for the police department to sift through the vast amount of data created in today’s world. UBIC’s forensic tool has been developed to enable the police and other investigating authorities to find the relevant evidence/ information.