Hello,
This is a question for all those in who run their own computer forensic business. I hope that this is not one of those questions that are out of bounds.
I am in the process of starting a little computer forensic shop and I am wondering if others out there are billing for machine time. Meaning, if I charge $100 an hour, are you billing while you are copying the image to your exam machine, while you are hashing the drive, and indexing it (as long as you are not doing other tasks). Say you kick off a keyword search them go home (or bed, if you work from home), are you billing while your machines are working on the case.
Just trying to get an over all feel of what others are doing.
Thanks
Lots and lots of threads already about this.
It's a decision you have to make on your own.
You have to decide what wear and tear on your machines are worth, what tying up a work machine is worth.
It sounds like your circumstance will be a very small 1 person shop possibly from home, so you probably can't afford to not charge to have your machine running. Others will say that it's not a client's fault you aren't bigger and you have to take that with a grain of salt as everyone who is on their own has started out with one machine.
1/2 normal billing seems to be reasonable by a lot of people, but even then you can't bill for every hour the machine is running, and if you aren't using the top of the line processors, RAM, SSD, drives, then the client gets cheated. You have to draw the line somewhere and figure on billing a certain number of hours for the working and figure that into a package type price. No way you get 20 hours standby billing to a client at $100 an hour.
Hello,
This is a question for all those in who run their own computer forensic business. I hope that this is not one of those questions that are out of bounds.
I am in the process of starting a little computer forensic shop and I am wondering if others out there are billing for machine time. Meaning, if I charge $100 an hour, are you billing while you are copying the image to your exam machine, while you are hashing the drive, and indexing it (as long as you are not doing other tasks). Say you kick off a keyword search them go home (or bed, if you work from home), are you billing while your machines are working on the case.
Just trying to get an over all feel of what others are doing.
Thanks
I think this is the best recent thread on this issue
http//www.forensicfocus.com/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=7591&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
It's Capitalism. If you customers are prepared to pay, why not.
I personally never do though. It doesn't feel right and I can afford not to. -)
I should probably mention that I am trying to do most processing overnight. My workstation has 48Gb DDR3 Ram and 24 Xeon cores etc etc so it does most of hard work when I sleep anyway.
I guess there is no wear and tear on that machine then.
Much like when you drive your car for a trip and the government pays you mileage (that is always over the gas rate) to include wear and tear on the vehicle.
It's Capitalism. If you customers are prepared to pay, why not.
I personally never do though. It doesn't feel right and I can afford not to. -)
I should probably mention that I am trying to do most processing overnight. My workstation has 48Gb DDR3 Ram and 24 Xeon cores etc etc so it does most of hard work when I sleep anyway.
Swings and roundabouts. You might charge $10/hr imaging time, but $100/hr of your time, someone else might not charge imaging time but charge $150/hr for their time. As ecophobia says, as long as they're prepared to pay, and/or are happy with it, why not. The guesstimate as to which the client prefers is anybody's guess and just a marketing decision really.
Hey Tall1,
Im interested in setting up a CF business too, so Im interested in your approach to it.
What sort of client / customer you aiming for? And what sort of work will you do?
Cheers.