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AVAIL Forensics LLC |
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September 30, 2019 Issue |
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CEOCFO MAGAZINE |
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AVAIL Forensics LLC provides custom-built hardware for Digital Forensics and e-Discovery for Businesses and Predominantly Law Enforcement, Federal Government and Military |
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President / CEO AVAIL Forensics LLC
Contact: Troy Vasos 877-888-5895
Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine – Published – September 29, 2019
CEOCFO: Mr. Vasos, would you tell us about AVAIL Forensics? Mr. Vasos: AVAIL Forensics is a true custom-built hardware provider, specifically for digital forensics, e-discovery, for businesses and predominantly law enforcement, federal government and military.
CEOCFO: When you say custom built, what are the components that you might be putting together? Mr. Vasos: Depending on the application, depending on the need, we have hardware devices and we partner with 54 manufacturers of different software products to do certain things such as extract data from computer hard drives from cell phones, satellite, phones, drones, internet accounts, social media, and things of that nature when they are doing any kind of illegal activity.
CEOCFO: Why would a company come to you instead of the person who has developed that extraction application? Mr. Vasos: Because there is a future benefit in being an integrator such as ourselves, where they have our ideas, they have their own individual ideas being in the business and using equipment for a number of years. They look at our ideas and products on our website; they have their own thoughts about what has worked well in the past for them. What we do is take their knowledge and our knowledge and bundle it together, and that is when we come up with a true custom hardware for them so they get the most bang for their buck and the most speed, power, capable for them, so they can give that data extracted and the evidence in front of the district attorney, prosecutor, as fast as possible.
CEOCFO: What are some of the differences that an individual organization might look for about a particular aspect of what you are doing? Mr. Vasos: These investigators at the state and local law enforcement level, the federal government agencies, and the military, because the military has needs overseas and here, all have different needs and they are specialized just like doctors are. A doctor is a heart specialist, so we have investigators who are digital forensic computer hard drive specialists.
We have specialists that are in the field of mobile data extraction, pulling data off of cell phones, drones and 409 units and things of that nature. Then we have guys that predominantly work in a lab scenario in an office, and we have specialists that actually do all of their work out in the field. They must not only have all this fast-great working equipment and software, but they have to do it detached away from any type of network or support mechanism. We are their arm of support by giving them both the equipment that they need and a contact knowledge base back here in our office if they need anything when they are detached and out on their own.
CEOCFO: I see on your site “A wide range of products, a wide range of pricing,” Are all customized or are some as-is; how does it work? Mr. Vasos: The moderately priced items on our website are set priced products. All the hardware devices, and the rugged carry-on type cases, are all customizable. We give them jumping-off points so what that means is here is what we have built for other customers and what works, and we put it up on a site, and put a price tag with it. If they come to us and say they like a particular unit but they would like to make three or four changes or add more memory or speed or storage capabilities, then we will add that and adjust the price up or down depending on what their budget is and what their need is for equipment speed and size. We will then produce a finished quote to them after we have validated and tested that the product will work the way they would like it to work.
CEOCFO: Do you keep much inventory? Mr. Vasos: Yes, we do. We keep inventory on what I would consider more consumable type products. On the go and on the fly like Faraday bag products, and the Faraday bags block signal from cell phones. This enables you to drop a phone in a bag, fold it closed and it completely blocks all signals, so you do not get calls, messages, emails or anything. You are locking down a phone encapsulated in that time, when you confiscated it from the individual. Those products we stock, ship and sell. The hardware itself, I would say 90% of it we do not stock and the reason is because technology changes quite often quite quickly.
Many of our competitors to try to maximize profits, they will buy in bulk and when you buy in bulk, a lot of times you get trapped with one or two versions old, or end of life type devices. When that happens, you must sell it. We would rather produce a product, produce a design and have the customer accept that design with all current make, models, and parts. We then are able to quickly order those parts and have it all brought into our facility within a matter of a couple of days and then the building process starts. When customers buy from us custom-build, not only are they getting custom build, but they are getting on leading-edge of technology every time we ship a product to them.
Many times, we send a quote out and agree on everything and sometimes it takes three to six months maybe longer for them to run the process, to purchase everything and do all the steps they have to do at the government level spending money. By the time we get the order six months later, several times these different parts have had end-of-life, and a new model of the same piece has come out. We automatically without question or without even necessarily alerting the customer, when we go to pull an order to build and order all the product, if a product has changed model and one product is no longer available and a new product has taken its place from the same manufacturer, we always give an order the newest and latest model of pieces of parts for the customer. They are ensured to get the latest up-to-date piece of equipment when we ship it to their site.
CEOCFO: Do your customers recognize the depth and quality of what you do? Mr. Vasos: Absolutely, our referral business is huge. I would say our referral business is probably 75% of our business. Our customers and end user investigators have all been thrilled with the products we have delivered as well as our impeccable 24/7 support.
CEOCFO: What is the competitively landscape are many other companies offering the range of products? Mr. Vasos: Not with the range of products. We are the only company that actually has this full depth of range of products. Much like I described the investigators earlier, they have their specialties. Most of our competitors in this field are specifically geared toward one type of product line over another, but we want to be a one-stop-shop.
CEOCFO: Would you tell us about the Wish List? Mr. Vasos: With our site you can register with a username and password. You can shop our site and you can add things to your shopping cart and then transfer it over to your wish list so that you are able to easily come back later and find that product for purchase. It also gives them a place to store those different products to show their superiors what things that they need to buy or want. It gives them a place to drop three or four products that they want to discuss in-depth with us, feature or functionality, or what can be modified and things of that nature.
CEOCFO: We came upon your company from a techno-security conference. How does AVAIL Forensics standout among a group of exhibitors? Mr. Vasos: I think to be on the cutting-edge of technology and things of that nature, because of our vast wide variety of different product lines, we do have a tremendous amount of foot traffic at our boot always because they can come to our booth and see six or seven different product lines. When I say product lines, it is more like product categories. Those categories are on our website and if you click on the products, you will see a drop-down and those different types are basically the categories. They can see our Faraday bag products, they can see our disk-duplicating products, our workstations, our (FT) Field Triage kits, and right on down the list. Those are all different types of categories that we sell products. Underneath those categories there is a wide depth of different styles and models. We stand out by being able to show them everything that they use on a daily basis whereas the other vendors have to specialize in one or two products, so they have to stop by a multitude of booths to see everything that they can see at our booth.
CEOCFO: What has changed in your approach over time and what have you learned as AVAIL Forensics has grown and evolved? Mr. Vasos: Something I have always had and have continued to improve upon, and what our competitors miss the mark on, is customer service and our warrantees. We were the very first to offer a three-year standard warrantee on all our equipment. We have had that for several years; probably eight to nine years. Last year on certain products, we were able to work with the hardware manufacturers and we were able to security on several of our products, a five-year standard warrantee. What that gives the customer is the feeling and the knowledge that they have a company, products and hardware standing behind them that if they do have an issue, not only is there going to be somebody to answer the phone, which we have been told is one of our greatest selling points because they can always reach us, but if they do have a falter someone is going to answer the phone and work with them. They are going to trouble-shoot the devices and then if it is something that needs to be fixed or exchanged, we quickly express ship those devices to them, pieces and parts to swap-out.
CEOCFO: What is ahead for AVAIL Forensics? Mr. Vasos: We want to stay on the path, and we think we are on the right path. We want to continue to grow which we have had tremendous growth over the last several years. We are always looking for new emerging types of technology. Last year, instead of just producing it for one or two agencies, we rolled it out for everybody late last year, a couple of field kits for the military, that they call DOMEX and CELLEX. These are military term that they use for field data collection and extraction from both hard drive data as well as cellphone data.
CEOCFO: Final thoughts? Mr. Vasos: If your readers are in the business as an investigator doing digital forensics and you have not experienced our products, website, customer support, I encourage them to do so. We are happy to give out references so they can speak with individuals just like themselves at any level of law enforcement, federal government or military, and let them hear straight form end-users like themselves, the quality of product and support that we offer, and give us a try.
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CEOCFO: Do your customers recognize the depth and quality of what you do? “Absolutely, our referral business is huge. I would say our referral business is probably 75% of our business. Our customers and end user investigators have all been thrilled with the products we have delivered as well as our impeccable 24/7 support.”- Troy Vasos
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Digital Forensics Hardware, AVAIL Forensics LLC, Digital Forensic Workstation, Troy Vasos, AVAIL Forensics LLC provides custom-built hardware for Digital Forensics and e-Discovery for Businesses and Predominantly Law Enforcement, Federal Government and Military, CEO Interviews 2019, Government Services Companies, Technology Company, Custom Build digital forensics hardware, forensic laptops, DAVE, AF, figital forensic workstations, Data Storage, Vault Storage, Data Lab, Data Vault Lab Solutions, Forensic Duplicating Kits, Mobile Triage Kits, Field Triage Kits, Cellebrite, UFED, FARADAY, FARADAY Bags, FARADAY, AVAIL Forensics LLC Press Releases, News |
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Troy
Vasos