Digital IP & Software Provenance Review
A review of contributor records, agreements, licence obligations and commit history to test whether the company owns the code it uses.
Technology assurance
Rapid technology matter assessment
A rapid technology matter assessment is a fixed-scope technical triage that establishes what is known, what is at risk and the next practical step within a short defined window.
Who uses this service
- Lawyers
- An early, neutral technical view of a dispute or claim, before advising a client or committing to a position on the evidence.
- Insolvency practitioners
- Recovered access, preserved domains, repositories and cloud accounts, and a view of which digital assets carry value and which are at risk of loss.
- Accountants
- The technical facts behind an early transaction question or a distressed situation, before they affect advice or figures.
When to commission it
- An urgent dispute has arisen and a technical position is asserted that has not yet been tested against the evidence.
- Access to a system, account or codebase is in question, or assets need to be preserved before they are changed or lost.
- An administrator or liquidator has been appointed and needs access recovered and digital assets identified early in the appointment.
- An early transaction question requires a technical answer before deciding whether fuller diligence is warranted.
- A software project has failed or stalled and the parties disagree on the cause, the state of the work and what it would take to recover.
- A board or practitioner needs a defensible starting view within days rather than weeks.
Questions the review answers
What is known, what is contested and what is still unknown on the current evidence?
What is at risk of loss, and what should be preserved first?
Which systems, data and digital assets carry value, and who controls access to them?
Does the asserted technical position hold up against the records available?
How confident can we be in each point, and what would change that confidence?
What is the next practical step, and does the matter warrant a fuller engagement?
Evidence normally requested
We request the evidence needed to test the technical position. The exact list depends on the matter.
- An inventory of access, accounts and administrative credentials, including who currently holds them
- Source repositories and commit history for the systems in question
- Cloud accounts, hosting and configuration, including billing and ownership records
- Incident records, support tickets and relevant system logs
- Relevant agreements, including development, contractor, hosting and licence terms
- Correspondence and technical documents that describe the disputed work or event
Method
Define the question and scope boundary
We agree the specific question the assessment must answer and record what is inside and outside scope, so the work stays fixed and the output is usable.
Preserve and collect evidence
We identify what is at risk of change or loss, advise on preservation, and collect the records, access inventory and system data needed to answer the question.
Test the technical position
We examine the evidence against the claims made, checking whether the asserted facts are supported by the repositories, logs, configuration and agreements reviewed.
Rate risk and confidence
We classify each point by risk and assign a confidence level of Confirmed, Supported, Indicative or Unknown, and we state the missing evidence behind any gap.
State the next action
We set out the next practical step for the matter, including whether preservation, a fuller engagement or no further technical work is warranted.
What you receive
- Document
- Fixed-scope written assessment
- Intended reader
- The instructing lawyer, insolvency practitioner or accountant, and their client where appropriate
- Risk classification
- Each point is rated by risk, from material risk through to matters recorded for information only.
- Confidence classification
- Each finding carries a confidence level of Confirmed, Supported, Indicative or Unknown.
- Includes
- An executive summary stating what is known, what is at risk and the recommended next step
- Evidence notes recording what was reviewed and what each item showed
- An action plan setting out the next step, its priority and who should own it
- Verbal briefing
- A verbal briefing to the instructing party is included, held after the written assessment is delivered.
Typical timing
Typically 5 to 10 working days
Commonly excluded from this matter
- Full technology due diligence; the rapid assessment is the triage that comes first
- Legal advice on the merits; we establish the technical facts your advisers build on
- Penetration testing or forensic data recovery, unless separately scoped
- Remediation; the fix stays separate to keep the assessment independent
Definition
Clients sometimes describe this as a forensic review or a technology audit. The engagement is an independent technical review. It is not a statutory audit, a forensic investigation to an evidentiary certification standard, or a legal opinion.
If more depth is needed
A rapid assessment is a fixed-scope triage. Where the decision needs a broader view of architecture, security, team and technical debt, a full technology due diligence is usually the better fit.
Clients in an administration or an early transaction often start with a rapid assessment for a first technical impression, then use the findings to weigh the commercial case for full due diligence.
Independence and reliance
We act as an independent assessor. We do not hold a stake in the outcome of the matter, and we report what the evidence supports, including where it does not support the party who instructs us.
We handle evidence so that its integrity is preserved and our steps can be explained later. We record what we reviewed, where it came from and what it showed, and we state the limitations behind each conclusion.
We do not remediate or rebuild the systems we assess. Keeping assessment separate from remediation removes the incentive to overstate a problem in order to win the follow-on work.
Related services and reading
Technology Due Diligence
An independent review of software, architecture, team, security, scalability and technical debt before an investment or transaction decision.
Methodology
How we define scope, preserve evidence and assign confidence levels to each finding.
Independence
How we manage conflicts, handle evidence and keep assessment separate from remediation.
Discuss a matter
Provide a short outline of the decision, transaction or dispute. Do not submit confidential source code, credentials or personal information through the form.