Technology Consulting & Services in the Middle East

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FTI Investigate: Mobile Software and Services Solution

Investigations can range widely—from whistle blower allegations, government inquiries and subpoenas, to corporate due diligence, potential Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations, and financial fraud. Often, the only consistent requirements across investigations are short time frames and an urgent need to keep sensitive data secure. Add in any number of common variables, such as foreign and local data privacy laws to high data volumes, and corporations face significant challenges executing internal investigations in a defensible manner.

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Digital Insights and Risk Management

Growing the business, protecting sensitive information and managing liability in a complex and dynamic environment – these are just a few of today’s organizational priorities in which enterprise data plays a critical role. How organizations, teams and stakeholders approach this data poses challenges and opportunities across the entire digital risk spectrum, including privacy, security, technology, legal, governance, risk and compliance.

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Digital Asset Investigations

Cryptocurrency and digital assets have created new challenges for corporations and law firms globally. Fraud, theft and misuse of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) make headlines almost daily, and recent market volatility has significantly impacted crypto-native organizations and institutions that relied on their services. Legal teams are facing a new, rapidly evolving subject matter that requires significant technical know-how to explain complex subjects to various audiences.

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Insolvency-Related Investigations

Many insolvency-related appointments are contentious, often arising as a result of disputes, particularly in the Middle East. Accordingly, legal teams often need to undertake complex investigations, likely around the dissipation of assets or establishing why the entity became insolvent. Often, it transpires that illegal or otherwise inappropriate activities led to the insolvency appointment. This can require defensible and thorough investigations to help determine the reasons for insolvency, including the interrogation of corporate and financial records, and identifying whether funds or assets were misappropriated or mismanaged.

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Data Remediation

From proprietary intellectual property to company and client data, your employees are constantly creating, sharing and storing sensitive information. Not only is this data expensive to store, but your company is at increased risk should it fall into the wrong hands. Plus, when you retain obsolete data, you risk it becoming relevant to future legal matters and potentially driving up the cost of e-discovery.

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Legal Hold

Many global organisations struggle to operationalise the legal hold process because they must handle a large volume of legal hold requests at the same time. Organisations struggling with juggling multiple legal hold requests and managing the nuances of the legal hold process should consider using technology to automate the process.

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Data Breach Support

Data breaches are accelerating in frequency and severity. Organisations are increasingly required to assess large volumes of data in short time frames to respond to mandatory data breach notification requirements and protect clients’ and employees’ personal data.

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Data Retention and Disposal Services

Poor data retention and disposal practices contribute to the over-accumulation of information that presents a range of business and compliance risks. Data retention also forms a key tenet of data protection laws across the world. Despite this, many organisations have insufficient processes in place to manage data.

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Data Governance Services

By 2025, it is anticipated that global data creation will grow to more than 180 zettabytes. It is not only that data creation is increasing, but we are also witnessing the complexity of data increasing. Despite accelerating data volumes, many organisations do not have a coherent and forward-looking data governance strategy to secure their data and exploit its maximum value.

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Information Governance Assessment

On average, companies spend $164 for every record stolen in a data breach, which represents a 12.3% increase compared to figures in 2020. Do you know your key areas of risk across your people, processes and technology?

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Legal and Regulatory Expertise for Financial Services

FTI Consulting works in partnership with its financial services clients as they manage their business challenges, specifically those imposed by the demanding and changing regulatory environment.

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Technical Due Diligence for Crypto-Natives - Law Firms

Informed decision-making is critical in the rapidly changing crypto landscape. Companies eyeing blockchain, digital assets or crypto-specific acquisitions must diligently evaluate of acquisition targets. Neglecting the pre-raise due diligence crypto-natives can result in unanticipated vulnerabilities, compliance gaps, and undisclosed and unseen liabilities jeopardising operational value and long-term success.

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Solutions for the Entire Blockchain and Digital Assets Ecosystem

Blockchain technology’s popularity has proven exciting and challenging for corporations looking to be at the forefront of the latest revolution in technology.

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Technical Due Diligence for Crypto-Natives

Companies eyeing blockchain, digital assets or crypto-specific acquisitions to acquire talent and technology or to gain an edge in an evolving industry must diligently evaluate acquisition targets. Without specific due diligence by specialised experts in blockchain technology, companies are vulnerable to potential reputational, financial, or operational risk from a lack of information.

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Confronting Data Risk with Expertise and Innovation

Amid an exponentially expanding universe of data, organisations are grappling with how to root out fraud, maintain regulatory compliance, protect sensitive information and mitigate an ever-expanding landscape of risk.

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Risk & Compliance Services for Smarsh

Smarsh clients are investing in Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered solutions to uncover risk, comply with regulations and safeguard corporate reputations. With growing concerns over the volume and variety of corporate communications and the increased potential for non-compliant behaviors to go undetected, it is necessary to leverage data and analytics to mitigate a wide range of risks. FTI Technology provides additional services in Risk & Compliance to address growing challenges and maintain a healthy compliance program while keeping control over the overall cost of compliance.

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Information Governance Services for Smarsh

Smarsh clients are taking proactive steps in the management of corporate communications to reduce their compliance risk and mitigate the rising cost of data management. With the Smarsh archive in place, further enhancements can help address broader challenges with corporate data across a diverse set of enterprise end-users that strengthen the ROI on this investment. FTI Technology provides a comprehensive suite of services to provide comfort that regulatory obligations are satisfied and business objectives are met.

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Remote Data Collections

With speed, efficiency and defensibility, FTI Consulting applies a systematic approach to collecting electronic data across the globe without the need for physical deployment. Using custom and industry-standard tools, our experienced data collection specialists maintain the forensic integrity, defensibility and security of data throughout supported by full chain of custody tracking.

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Virtual Managed Review

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, FTI Technology’s award-winning managed review service is now available through a secure, virtual environment.

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Spreading Like Wildfire: Emerging Data Sources Continue to Spark Governance, Compliance, Discovery Challenges

Concerns over emerging data sources have reached an all-time high. After several years of steadily burning in the background of legal department challenges, the flames have caught on and grown, forcing in-house counsel and their law firms into fire-fighting mode across e-discovery, compliance monitoring, investigations, regulatory response and more. Over the last year, 62% of global general counsel confirmed they had experienced distinct new issues associated with collaboration tools, chat applications, file shares and other similar cloudbased systems, and nearly all (93%) expressed some level of concern about emerging data sources as a significant area of risk.

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Q&A: Jack Fletcher Discusses Looming Data Privacy Deadlines in Saudi Arabia

The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) is expected to start full enforcement of the country’s Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) in September 2024. In this Q&A, Jack Fletcher, an FTI Technology privacy expert in the Middle East region, shares his perspectives on the current state of readiness among most organisations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

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How UAE Institutions Can Hit the Gold Standard in Financial Crime Compliance and Investigations

Adherence to strong data practices is critical.

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UAE Financial Crime Compliance: How To Prepare for Potential Investigations

The United Arab Emirates government is actively escalating its efforts to prosecute and investigate financial crime. Financial crime prevention, investigation and response are highly complex and challenging for institutions based in, or operating in, the UAE, and increasingly so. Banks need to build robust preparedness programs or full-scale compliance technology and controls to compete on the international stage against global peers that apply a stringent international benchmark.

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AI Readiness Through Effective Information Governance in Microsoft Environments

In the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, generative AI is becoming a disruptive force, reshaping how machines interact with and create content. Advancements in this space offer the potential to unlock unparalleled benefits ranging from speeding up content production to enhancing, streamlining and automating processes. Nevertheless, the rise of generative AI can also pose a significant risk if the underlying information and workflows are poorly governed. Insufficient AI governance can lead to an array of problems, such as biased outputs, data protection vulnerabilities and the potential for making inaccurate or incomplete decisions based upon on out-of-date information.

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Technology Modernisation for Internal Investigations: Clarion Call for Innovation and Improvement

The landscape of internal investigations has changed dramatically in recent years. This has been driven by factors including increased regulatory and legal pressures, unforeseen government intervention and growth in the scale of information requests. As a result, large organisations today are inundated with an increasing volume of whistleblower claims, allegations of misconduct, customer complaints and claims, suspicious activity reports, freedom of information requests, data subject access requests (DSARs), subpoenas, etc. While each request differs in substance, they all share the requirement to collect information, review and investigate, collaborate on findings, and report.

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Understanding Digital Assets in the Middle East

The Middle East is rapidly becoming a region that is friendly towards cryptocurrency and digital assets businesses. Several initiatives focused on infrastructure, regulatory frameworks, goals, and hubs for businesses interested in blockchain and digital assets ecosystem have been established across the region. These initiatives aim to ensure consumer protection, collaborative governance, and alignment with current financial ecosystem guidance and frameworks.

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Forecasting Digital Risk in 2024

After a feverish period of disruption across many facets of technology, it’s becoming more difficult to delineate between what could happen and what will happen in the months and year ahead. Business leaders often rely upon industry forecasts to prepare for anticipated change that is likely to impact their operations, go-to-market strategies, hiring plans, etc. Yet in a hype-filled environment in which it seems like anything is possible, organizations must be highly discerning about how they prepare for evolving digital risk and establish resilience for future technological disruption.

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The 2024 General Counsel Report: General Counsel Indicate Tipping Points in Strategy, Technology Adoption and Operations - EMEA

Digital risk has triggered a fundamental shift in the corporate legal department. Against a tremulous cultural, economic and geopolitical backdrop, numerous issues have cascaded into tipping points across the legal function. Data-centered regulatory activity, privacy requirements, generative artificial intelligence disruption, technology advancement and an expansive web of emerging data sources are now impacting the way legal departments prioritize resources. In addition to placing tremendous demand on in-house counsel, this environment has led to a decline in the general counsel’s feelings of preparedness for every major risk category.

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The ABC (D and E) of Technology for Effective Investigations

Investigations today often involve millions of documents and records originating from tens or hundreds of disparate data sources. In complex, high-stakes investigations, manual processes and reluctance to leverage advanced tools to find key information from within large, diverse data sets are causing excessive time, cost and complexity in bringing matters to a swift and defensible conclusion. The use of technology has become essential in responding to modern investigations and catching problems as they arise. However, advanced tools must be applied in a standardised, documented and defensible manner in order for findings to stand up to scrutiny among regulatory authorities and the courts.

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UAE Financial Crime and Investigations Pulse Check

A recent announcement from the United Arab Emirates attorney general confirmed the government is moving forward with plans to establish special prosecution entities for financial crimes. This step is a continuation and escalation of the UAE’s efforts to increase investigations and prosecutions into abuse of the financial sector and other ancillary channels of illicit flows. It also aligns to the government’s “Forward Economy” and “Forward Ecosystem” strategies to advance as a global leader in economic and judicial strength.

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FTI Technology Delivers Rapid Response, Critical Fact Finding and Defensible Reduction of More Than 10 Million Documents in Multi-National Financial Services Regulatory Investigation

A large, global bank was facing multiple regulatory inquiries into certain practices, which required the organization to conduct an in-depth investigation across jurisdictions. FTI Technology was engaged to provide digital forensics, data processing, project management and managed document review services across the entire matter.

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Data Privacy for Financial Services Organisations in Saudi Arabia: The Countdown to Compliance

In July 2023, Implementing Regulations to support the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Personal Data Protection Regulation (PDPL) were released and subject to a one-month consultation period. The Implementing Regulations supplement recent amendments to the PDPL, which were approved in March 2023, and together these signal close alignment with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Key principles to that end include similar adequacy and data transfer mechanisms, breach notification timelines and the introduction of a legitimate interest basis for processing personal data.

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Driving Innovative Client Solutions

At FTI Technology we drive innovative client solutions to solve data-related business challenges. Innovative technology, expert services and tenacious problem-solving provide our global clients with defensible and repeatable solutions. Technology plays a key role in turning large and complex volumes of data into information that enables businesses to make informed decisions.

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Delivering on the Promise of “Cradle-to-Grave” Data Management in Large Financial Institutions

Financial institutions are grappling with significant, ongoing challenges in their management of valuable communications data. These challenges are driven by accelerated technology change, a wholesale shift to cloud platforms and many long-lasting changes in working practices and behaviors post-COVID. Financial institutions have experienced a seismic shift from an era where all communications data was stored in centralized servers within the walls of its enterprise data centers. Now, email, chat, voice and video along with other dynamic forms of collaborative content, is stored across a myriad of third-party communications channels and cloud-based platforms outside the perimeter of the enterprise.

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Technology Building Blocks for Mitigating Risk and Impact in Construction Litigation

The construction and engineering fields are constantly evolving in response to new technological developments. While these changes bring innovation, efficiency and opportunity, they also introduce risk discovers David Beck and Gráinne Bryan.

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Navigating Global Crypto Economies with FTI Consulting - YouTube

As the blockchain and digital asset ecosystem evolves, regulatory measures are essential to prevent crypto crimes. FTI Consulting offers support in risk management, compliance, transaction advisory, dispute resolution, and litigation services to address these challenges.

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Jorge Carrasco on Web3TV - Fintech Summit with Ornella! - YouTube

The Fintech Summit is an international summit dedicated to the future of technological innovation in financial services, blockchain, banking and payment institutions. Hear from Jorge Carrasco, a Blockchain and Web3 expert and enthusiast with more than 15 years of experience building and developing lines of business related to emerging technologies.

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Unveiling the Global Digital Assets Race: Insights from Experts on UAE, Europe, and Hong Kong’s Competition for Leadership

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has long been recognized as a pioneering nation that consistently leads the way in innovation and technological advancement. In recent years, the UAE has demonstrated its commitment to staying at the forefront of the digital assets industry, solidifying its position as a global hub for companies operating in this transformative field.

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The State of Emerging Data 2023: An Overlapping Arrival and Departure - EMEA

Emerging data sources passed a tipping point this year. It was an expected turn for experts watching the evolution of systems, applications, technology adoption and communication habits over the past several years. Some understood that this year would bring an arrival of a new data reality. Indeed expectations have been validated — 71% of CIOs from the world’s largest organizations now say that the explosion of data is beyond human ability to manage. Simply, traditional data norms have been replaced by a complex, vast, dynamic and constantly changing data universe.

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Forensic Analysis and E-Discovery Complexities in Cloud-Based Investigations - EMEA

The corporate transition to the cloud continues to present significant, continually evolving challenges for discovery in disputes and investigations. The majority of enterprise data now reside in expansive cloud-based environments, and productivity platforms such as Microsoft 365 promise robust discovery and compliance features, alongside a continually evolving feature set. As a result, there has been a trend towards conducting cloud-first and cloud-only data collection and preservation — a departure from the traditional approach of broadly collecting data from custodian devices, removable media and on-premises server-based sources.

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FTI Technology Helps Major National Bank Enhance Its Smarsh Deployment to Deliver Cross-Functional Single Source of Truth for Communications Data

After implementing Smarsh to archive all communications, a major national bank needed access across multiple end-user teams and functions, including legal, regulatory compliance and more. The bank engaged FTI Technology to provide access to this single source of communications data for a broader audience, thus enhancing the bank’s return on its initial technology implementation.

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Q&A: David Beck On Digital Forensic Investigations in the Middle East

David Beck, a Managing Director within FTI Technology in Dubai, has more than 20 years of experience in investigations, computer crime and digital forensics consulting. As organisations around the globe look to prepare for an increase in regulatory enforcement, cross-border litigation and other disputes, David is working to help clients establish internal governance and workflows to ease the burden of investigations In this Q&A, he discusses current trends, best practices and his views of what’s on the horizon.

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How to Implement a Sustainable Information Governance Framework

We live in a world with rapidly accelerating data volumes, and in which data sources are becoming more complex all the time. With the rise of unstructured data sources such as videos, audio files and instant messages, business teams have an unprecedented data landscape to contend with. In parallel, many businesses are holding onto an ever-increasing universe of data, often without a holistic strategy to manage information and reduce digital risk. The result is an environment in which risks abound, costs soar and business agility is hampered.

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How GDPR Programs May Serve as a Springboard for KSA PDPL Compliance

The Personal Data Protection Law in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA PDPL) was amended in December 2022 to closely align to the requirements within the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and these amendments were accepted in March of this year with the new enforcement date being September 2023. With these latest developments, many multi-national organisations will need to develop new policies and procedures, conduct data protection impact assessments and implement updated governance models, among other compliance activities.

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Q&A: FTI Technology’s Blockchain and Digital Assets Team Expands in the Middle East

Jorge Carrasco, a blockchain and digital assets expert with hands-on experience in emerging technologies, Web3 and advanced technical deployments, recently joined FTI Technology’s growing Blockchain and Digital Assets practice, as a Managing Director in Dubai. In this Q&A, Jorge discusses the opportunities and risks organisations in the Middle East should be thinking about as they explore metaverse, Web3 and other blockchain-based applications.

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The Most Valuable, Vulnerable Commodity - EMEIA

The FTI Technology Digital Insights & Risk Management Study, a comprehensive report that examines the extent to which organizations are recognizing the high stakes of data and effectively managing digital risk, involved senior business leaders from various global geographies and industries, with over 90% being at the executive level with primary or final decision-making authority.

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The 2023 General Counsel Report - EMEA

Risk is now at the centre of every conversation in the modern legal department. Over four consecutive years of study in the annual General Counsel Report, in-house counsel have expressed how they’ve been required to evolve and reinvent their roles. Once seen only as risk mitigators, they have become strategic business partners and have taken on an array of new responsibilities across a widening risk landscape.

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FTI Technology Serves as Court-Appointed Data Expert in Multi-Jurisdiction Trade Secrets Dispute

When a Dubai- and Palestine-based joint venture between two multi-national organisations in the pharmaceutical and health care industry deteriorated into a contentious trade secrets dispute, the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) courts ordered a resolution in the form of a massive data remediation. The court appointed FTI’s Technology team in Dubai to serve as the independent expert to conduct data discovery, review and deletion for all disputed instances of trade secrets and source code across the violating entity’s systems. FTI Technology deployed experts from across the Middle East, U.S., U.K., Ireland, Spain and South Africa to complete a complex remediation involving 90 custodians, numerous systems and more than 100 devices.

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Creating Resilient Data Privacy Programmes in the Middle East

FTI Consulting's Ben Crew and Shahin Shamsabadi joined Thomson Reuters – Practical Law to discuss the creation of resilient data privacy programmes in the Middle East.

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Investigations and Whistleblowing in the Middle East and Africa

Red flag issues for global and regional business

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Pandemic Lessons Learned in Remote Forensic Analysis

Prolonged pandemic restrictions significantly changed the landscape for investigations, as the once typical travel to client sites to perform on-site forensic data acquisition was either severely limited or not an option at all. Data collection methodologies suddenly shifted from traditional disk-to-disk copy to remote methods, requiring digital forensics experts to establish methodologies that would enable remote collections in a defensible manner, presentable to a court, regulator or senior stakeholders.

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The New UAE Privacy Law and its Practical Implications

The UAE Government has recently introduced a new data privacy law. Watch this video as experts, Ben Crew, Head of Information Governance, Privacy, and Security MENA at FTI Consulting and Hamed Halawani, Head of Risk Specialists, Middle East, and North Africa at Thomson Reuters discuss these new laws in detail and what the implications are for businesses in the UAE.

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Tracing Crime on the Dark Web

Given its lawlessness, complexity and lack of transparency, monitoring the Dark Web requires expertise and experience. It is often difficult for organisations due to a lack of highly skilled resources and skillset they typically have available. Instead, companies would be better served by working closely with a technology provider who can provide the relevant support along with assistance in closely monitoring the Dark Web for relevant data using specialist tools and techniques.

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Spear Phishing: Carefully Targeted, Extremely Damaging and Fast Increasing

As spear phishing becomes sophisticated and widespread it’s essential that organisations take a multi-layered approach to protecting themselves. This means buying in expertise in staff training, cyber security and monitoring from an external source that specialises in this growing risk.