Yoke Har Lee: Cyber-surgeon offers hope when all seems lost

Being able to build gadgets should not be confused with the ability to run a business, says Brian Eardley-Wilmot. Photo / Dean Purcell

Computer Forensics' managing director Brian Eardley-Wilmot has sniffed out quite a few business opportunities in the past. His current venture is built around playing cyber-sleuth, to catch data thieves, and being a cyber-surgeon, fixing crashed computers to salvage priceless data.

Computer Forensics is running at full capacity, catering to its clients in this country as well as growing interest from Australia, which now accounts for 30 per cent of the company's business.

"We grow between 15 and 20 per cent per year. Business is very much on the rise," says Eardley-Wilmot.

As a data recoverer, he enjoys helping clients get over their sense of complete loss.

"Losing priceless data can bring a company to its knees," he says. "It is the same sort of damage that's seen when families lose all their photos."

Eardley-Wilmot says he is not a technical person but surrounds himself with computer detectives. The company has seven employees.

"There is nowhere you can learn about data recovery. The person has to learn on the job. It needs a particular sort of person - someone who is enthusiastic, someone with a huge, energetic and driven mind whose dedication and purpose is 'I must get the data back'."

Another pillar of the company's success is its huge collection of hard disks and associated parts, which can be used to rehabilitate a damaged disk.

Computer Forensics, says Eardley-Wilmot, succeeds because it is highly focused on what it does. "We don't sell hardware or software. We just do data recovery and investigations."

Although the company undertakes corporate investigative work, he has decided not to handle data investigation for criminal defence.

Anyone intending to steal proprietary information from their employers better think twice. The chances are that the computer's memory will have a trace of anyone accessing the company's data.

"It is like an index of a book; when you tear off the table of contents contained in the index, the information is still in the book," says Eardley-Wilmot, explaining why files can be retraced if the memory has not been overwritten.

The only way data is lost forever is when a computer's hard disk is so severely damaged it is beyond salvaging, or when replacement or donor parts cannot be found to rebuild a damaged disk.

Word of mouth is Computer Forensics' biggest marketing tool. Eardley-Wilmot says the Australian business started with a mention from the New Zealand branch of an Australian company. The company also advertises on Google, as well as Telstra's White Pages.

Speed and customer service are two critical areas. Where possible, the company has a commitment to a 72-hour turnaround time. "It may sound trite but lots of people just pay lip service to customer service. If you do the best for your clients, you build a name in the business. Word of mouth is the best advertisement you can get."

Eardley-Wilmot was once the New Zealand distributor for Apple, and handled Microsoft's distribution before the company decided to have its own presence here.

He got into the computer business when he was selling Hewlett Packard and Texas Instruments calculators to universities, and noticed a marked decrease in sales.

Eardley-Wilmot found that universities were starting to use more personal computers so he wrote to three companies - Apple, RadioShack and Commodore - seeking to represent their products. Apple was the first to respond positively, so he went to see the company.

"I stayed at a Howard Johnson's hotel in San Jose, and asked the desk about how to get to Apple. They had never heard of a company called Apple."

Eardley-Wilmot was a little nervous about meeting Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. "I knew precious little about computers then and was a bit concerned about what he would ask me. I found out later that he was hoping the same, that I won't ask him technicalities about computers."

Eardley-Wilmot remembers personally visiting every secondary school he could find over the next two and a half years, in his efforts to sell Apple computers.

In the early 1990s he sold his company, BriMaur Services International, and spent time as a business mentor before getting restless again. He saw an opportunity to supply a service in data recovery and started Computer Forensics in 1999.

Wearing his former business mentor's hat, Eardley-Wilmot says entrepreneurs often fail because of a lack of focus. "To succeed or aspire to some form of excellence, you need focus. If you take your eye off the ball, by doing a number of different things, you end up doing nothing particularly well."

The ability to build gadgets should not be confused with the ability to run a business. "This is a huge mistake start-ups make - thinking someone who has built something will automatically become a good business person knowing how to market, how to manage a company, and how to sell products."