Over the years, Joel has gained experience working on hundreds of cases involving digital evidence. These cases have ranged in size from single computer investigations through cases involving multinational companies where hundreds of electronic devices were involved. Joel has submitted dozens of computer forensic expert reports and affidavits to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice and has successfully defended them under cross-examination.
Joel has developed several techniques and proprietary software tools designed to increase the accuracy and efficiency of forensic technology processes as they pertain to electronic discovery. He has worked on computer forensic investigations in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, China and Trinidad.
Representative Professional Experience
Expert Testimony – $10 Million Anti-Piracy Victory
Joel was retained as an expert witness in an anti-piracy matter involving a major Hollywood studio and the suspected operator of a website dedicated to streaming episodes and selling bootlegged merchandise based on a popular TV program. Joel’s mandate was to perform the search and seizure of the suspected operator’s residence (by executing an Anton Piller Order), to undertake forensic technology analysis and to provide an independent opinion to the court.
During the review of the suspect’s computers, Joel located key evidence proving the studio’s claims and issued an expert report with his findings to the court. Joel’s evidence was monumental in the award of a $10 million judgment in favor of the studio. The judgment marked one of the largest awards of its type specific to anti-piracy in Canadian history.
Litigation Support – Competition Bureau Order
Joel acted on behalf of a client to assist in responding to a Supplementary Information Request issued by the Canadian Competition Bureau. Joel and his team successfully collected, deduplicated and filtered millions of documents by date range and keywords. Documents that were responsive to the filtering process were then published to a proprietary platform for review by the client’s counsel.
During their review, counsel identified approximately 2.3 TB of responsive information. Joel’s team prepared the identified documents for production and disclosure (which would have been approximately 50,000 boxes of paper documents).
Information Security – Incident Response
A client’s information technology network was attacked, compromised and ultimately held hostage by a foreign nation state. Joel and his team immediately locked down the client’s network to prevent further damage. They then identified and preserved the state of all compromised systems and began investigating the attack vectors.
After a few days, the team issued a report detailing how and from where the network was breached, as well as the path the attackers took as they progressed through the client’s network. Finally, the team assisted the client with rebuilding the network and strengthening its information security posture to help prevent similar attacks from being successful in the future.
Education and Certifications
- M.S., Information Assurance, Davenport University
- Bachelor of Applied Information Science, Information Systems Security, Sheridan College
- EnCase Certified Examiner (EnCE)
