Farid, we last spoke with you about 3 years ago. What’s new with you and Logicube, and what remains the same?
When we spoke back in 2018, we had just launched our new and “next-generation” premier forensic imager, the “Falcon-NEO”. While we had anticipated that our most discerning clients would appreciate the new features and enhancements that we had incorporated in the Falcon-NEO to differentiate it from the truly revolutionary and ground-breaking “original” Falcon imager, we had not expected that the reception, adoption, and deployment of the “NEO” would gain such rapid momentum and traction that within a couple of years it would become the de-facto standard and — according to one esteemed reviewer of the product — the “Best-In-Class” forensic imager in the market. Therefore the massive acceptance and dominance that the Falcon-NEO has gained worldwide has probably been the biggest and most welcomed change at Logicube in recent years.
What has remained the same, and will remain the same for as long as I have the privilege of leading Logicube, is our commitment to our clients to deliver them the most advanced and innovative products, at the highest quality and lowest failure rates, at the fastest (industry-leading) order-fulfillment lead-times, and to support them with the most responsive technical support operation. I am confident and proud that we are practicing what we claim, day in and day out…
What achievements from this period would you most like to highlight for our readers? What are you proudest of?
What I am proudest of is what our customers and reseller partners tell us all the time: Logicube is the most responsive and reliable hard drive duplication and digital forensic manufacturer in the world! And, just to be clear, by “responsive” I do not mean, for instance, that we respond to our clients’ queries the quickest! We recognize that we are one manufacturer in a relatively small and congested market segment. We compete with a number of other reputable manufacturers. However, what our clients, some of whom also purchase from or represent other manufacturers, also tell us is that no other manufacturer is as reliable and dependable for them as Logicube. They know that Logicube’s products and technologies are second to none, they know that if they purchase or resell our products they can do so with the confidence that we will not only meet what we claim our products can do but also that our products are scalable and for the most part “future proof”.
Our customers know that they will not face major failures or recalls when they deploy our gear on a large scale, and that we will keep our products up to date with regular — and free! — software updates. Our clients know that if they need specific customizations to be done on a product for a certain application we will be receptive to implementing that for them. And finally, they know that we will solve our product issues, if we ever encounter any, and we won’t leave them in a lurch. This reputation has been hard-earned. We are proud of it.
The pandemic affected the way many forensics customers went about their jobs. How did Logicube and its solutions help them?
First, I would like to point out that as the pandemic started to get a grip on every aspect of our lives and as many businesses were forced to either shut down and stay at home or drastically curtail their operations, Logicube was among the other businesses that were deemed “Essential” by the government and was allowed to remain in full operational mode in 2020. That categorization was at its root due to Logicube’s ability to provide material and services in support of national security needs of the federal and state governments and the US military, as well as to workers supporting critical IT infrastructure, and also to government-owned and contractor-operated facilities that help meet the requirements of forensic investigators, including to the Department of Defense.
Therefore, despite the pandemic, we continued to play our usual role in support of the IT and forensic needs of our country. More specifically, Logicube’s products, imagers as well as write blockers, have the added capability of being operated “remotely”. This means that forensic investigators, for instance, need not be next to the equipment to access them and they can easily and seamlessly run their tasks through our network-connected gear.
Furthermore, even beyond our digital forensic products, our commercial / IT products were used heavily by businesses that needed to ramp up their production and their throughput in support of the first responders and in producing protective equipment. Logicube’s industrial grade and multi-target products were deployed to enable those businesses to boost their production line capacities.
Likewise, what unique pandemic-related challenges did Logicube face as a company, and how did you meet them?
Of course, by far the biggest challenge that we faced as a company during the pandemic was the “internal” challenge of ensuring the safety and security of our employees. We put in all the safety and sanitation measures outlined by the CDC and managed to create an environment for our staff that allowed them to come to work with relative peace of mind.
Furthermore, like many other businesses we put in place “remote working” practices and procedures whereby much of the work of our staff (aside from our manufacturing operations) could be conducted remotely. As far as the impact of pandemic on how we support our clients, the biggest challenge for us (which we brought under control rather quickly) was managing our supply chain and the lead-times for the raw material we use in producing our products. One of the factors that distinguishes Logicube from many of its competitors is our ability to pre-order, procure, and maintain a large inventory of the supply. Unlike others, we take risks in pre-ordering what we believe we will need based on our customers’ forecasts so that when the time comes for our clients to want to have their orders fulfilled they do not have to wait weeks, and in some cases and with some other manufacturers, even months, to have their orders shipped to them. By doing so, we managed to fulfil every demand placed on us last year and indeed exceeded our, and our customers’, expectations and achieved one of our best years on record.
Something you mentioned in our previous conversation was emerging technology that could be applied to products like Falcon-NEO. Can you give us an example of the kind of technology that excites you most about the future of acquisitions?
Of course, the ability to capture data from “Cloud Drives” has been around for a while and offered by other, software-centric, technology providers. But we were very excited to be able to be the first manufacturer to offer “Cloud Drive Capture” as a new feature on an all-in-one portable hardware imager, our flagship imager the Falcon-NEO. The cloud storage acquisition feature is an annual renewable software subscription solution. It currently supports Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox. The log on credentials for the respective cloud storage area are required to successfully perform an extraction of data from it. The data from the cloud storage can be saved locally in a L01, LX01, Zip file or as a directory tree structure replicating the respective storage area. Using the File-to-File functionality of the Falcon-NEO the process to harvest the information is a simple step by step operation that even non-technical users can perform. With the growth of offsite storage being used by most users, this feature is again a must have solution to ensure a full investigative capability can be exploited leaving no data behind or unavailable for examination.
Can you give us a sneak peek of what we can look forward to from Logicube this year?
For as long as Logicube has existed, our clients have come to expect a constant R&D effort from us. Our customers know and expect that Logicube’s development roadmap will never be stagnant and that they can count on new products or new major enhancements to our existing products every year, often on multiple platforms. This year will be no exception.
We intend to release several new major capabilities on our forensic lineup. Our clients can also rest assured that as the life cycle of our current products near their ends, new and more powerful ones will follow at the same rate as before. Logicube is the market leader in technology and innovation in our field and we have no intention of conceding that mantle to others.
One other commitment that we can make to our customer base is that this year they can expect to see and hear more from us! We have traditionally been perhaps a bit shy or “reserved” in terms of publicizing our prowess in many areas, but this year we plan on having a bigger presence in our social ecosystem and in communicating better with the market that we serve.