Our History

A brief history of Interhack.

As former colleagues at AT&T's Bell Laboratories, C. Matthew Curtin, Gary F. Ellison, and Doug W. Monroe started Interhack in the summer of 1997 as a small computer research group focused on the Internet as a global platform for communication and computation. The trio understood that to achieve its potential, the Internet needed to work without compromising the privacy of its users and consequently needed an appropriate degree of security. Interhack's work let to the Interhack Web becoming a repository of technical research notes on Internet infrastructure, privacy, and security.

In 1999, Mr. Curtin saw that we could have the greatest impact in making the Internet work better for everyone as a for-profit enterprise, using revenue from consulting and software development to continue to fund our research work. We formed Interhack Corporation in the first quarter of 2000.

By remaining active in researching and development as well as consulting, we can maintain a unique "best of both worlds" perspective to provide solutions for our clients: as a unit focused on providing solutions to organizations with specific needs backed up by the research and development of a unit of hardcore technologists. Few consultants can make such a claim.

We found that the most common applications of our work occurred in the world of the expert witness, where questions asked mattered and answers given had to be not just good enough, but exactly right. We found that in litigation and events that could turn into the basis for litigation, knowing what was only the first step. In the end, why often matters just as much, or more. Our focus on matters with high stakes led to the formation of the practice as one that supported clients throughout the U.S. from the beginning.

In 2003, we organized our practice into two distinct practice areas, Information Assurance and Forensic Computing. Over time we have provided services including information assurance program assessment, vulnerability assessment, penetration testing, electronic discovery, data analytics, and expert witness presentation. We delivered opinions across a wide variety of sectors: healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, public administration, education, retail, hospitality, and more.

In 2012 we carved from our Forensic Computing practice a new practice in Electronic Discovery. Focusing on the tactical use of information technology and data in litigation, the practice supports corporations and law firms large and small in their need to preserve data and to turn data into information. Coming from the world of forensic computer analysis rather than document management, our Electronic Discovery practice is built from the ground up to use the kind of rigor that the demands of litigation need.

Evolution of the marketplace being ongoing, we organized again in late 2014 to ensure that we could best meet the needs of clients from all three of our practice areas. Interhack Corporation organized its Information Assurance practice as Cybersecurity, reflecting a change to deal more with the practical aspects of preventing, preparing for, and responding to a variety of risks that all have a common element in the electronic world. Our Forensic Computing practice shifted to a Computer Expert practice, where we address all matters of electronic evidence, computer forensics, and understanding the technology for adjudication built around the needs of the case. We spun off our Electronic Discovery practice to create a new venture, Secure Discovery, taking the essential elements of Interhack's reliability and packaging it with other solutions to create a single vendor to address the needs that arise in the collection, organization, and production of electronically stored information (ESI) for litigation.

Today Interhack addresses the security and forensic needs of clients across North America in matters ranging from governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) to criminal justice. We conduct operations to test security, to challenge reports, and to present information that stands under the most hostile conditions.