After his education in information technology, Alberto Giorgio served as an international IT consultant for companies including Oracle, Vodafone, Fastweb, Avea, Intesa San Paolo, Unicredit, Banca Sella, Lombardia Informatica and Informatica Trentina. Among his projects was the development of a fraud detection tool for Unicredit, a Milan-based banking company with over €800 billion in assets—a project that fueled his passion for digital forensics. He founded Studio Giorgio in 2007 as an independent digital forensic consultancy, and in the 15 years since, eight more forensic investigators have joined his team.
Studio Giorgio has used Exterro’s FTK Forensic Toolkit since its founding, starting first with the free FTK Imager software. In 2014, as the business was growing and he was looking to make additional investments in hardware and software, Alberto researched his options, read user reviews, and evaluated competing technologies, before deciding that FTK was the right choice as their principal investigatory tool.
A Scalable Solution for a Growing Team
As the business grew, Alberto’s team grew to include eight additional digital forensic investigators handling intellectual property, copyright law, cybercrime, and civil and criminal tax assessments. Some cases could be handled by individual investigators, but Studio Giorgio needed a platform for collaboration, so multiple investigators could work simultaneously on a single case, sharing evidence without duplicating work or wasting time waiting around.
They chose FTK Central—and it paid off. The Studio Giorgio team uses it for internal document reviews when they have to evaluate and classify confidential documents for intellectual property cases, as well as in cases where they serve as technical experts for the Italian court system. “The entire process of search and review is faster,” Alberto explained. “For a small studio like ours, time management is everything. We can split workflows and manage cases, reviews and external reviews in a better way. Batch review in particular is a real time-saver. The choice was simple, and our investment will be easily repaid.”
Pulling Away from the Competition
Digital forensics is a relatively young industry in Italy, but since its founding, Studio Giorgio has been a leader, offering innovative services to private corporations and the criminal and civil court system. Where their competitors are working manually or with slow, inefficient home-made solutions, Studio Giorgio are using an industry-leading solution embraced by enterprises and law enforcement agencies across the globe. Alberto is confident he’s made the right choice working with FTK once again. “We are the first forensics firm in Italy to buy FTK Central, and with its help, we will continue to be the leading private studio in Italian forensic science.”