Executive Summary
Nine23 has been chosen as the trusted, independent 3rd party secure provider for managed IT services by the High Court in a commercial dispute between two large technology providers regarding alleged intellectual property infringement on proprietary source code.
About
Nine23 was selected to provide secure air-gapped environments for source code review on behalf of both end-clients (international technology providers specialising in complex software workloads) by order of the High Court, based on our ability to maintain neutrality between competing parties and our understanding of the sensitivity and types of controls required to enable both parties to act with confidence.
Nine23 are engaged with the end-clients’ legal representatives, two of the largest and most prestigious international law firms specialising in litigation and international trade/commercial disputes. The engagement requires coordination with an international team of technical experts, as well as complying with the bounds of the court order and ensuring parity between access and provision to the parties to a legally admissible standard.
The Challenges
The parties require identical, secure managed IT solutions for their clients. Both law firms’ internal IT teams offered to find a solution, but given the nature of the dispute between their clients there was a perceived conflict of interest and potential to prejudice proceedings.
It was also a conflict of interest for the clients to build the solution themselves, or any organisation that has a previous or current association with them, which rules out many global corporate IT firms.
Challenges continued as they agreed on high-level requirements and outcomes but were unable to specify technical standards or build details due to a lack of experience or familiarity of working with a solution with the level of security required.
In conclusion, a trusted, independent 3rd party, secure IT provider was the only resolution to build the solution.
The Solution
Nine23 was recommended by an e-Discovery provider that was engaged with the firm on different cases and agreed by the High Court to be the trusted, independent 3rd party, secure, managed IT solutions provider. Due to Nine23 having a niche target market of UK compliance and regulatory organisations, there was no conflict of interest and Nine23 could be an unbiased, trusted provider.
The initial high-level requirements made it a challenging solution to build therefore Nine23 has spent the necessary time and effort with the client to agree on how to deliver the bespoke solution to meet their needs, wants and requirements.
As a trusted 3rd party Nine23 was able to facilitate the transfer of sensitive materials between customers to the twin bespoke systems and liaise with both the Law Firms and designated experts to ensure both parity and functionality. Further requests for software and libraries have required the development of reliable and trusted mechanisms to provision an offline and restrictive environment.
Nine23 have provisioned and facilitated the provision of non-trusted 3rd party services into the secure environment and ensured both the integrity and security of the customer materiel through processes and technologies to the satisfaction of both the experts and their respective legal representation. On these services Nine23 have advised all parties on security requirements and the practicalities involved in maintaining the initial requirements.
Results
This solution is ongoing for 6 months so far.
