CDSA

Leaving no stone unturned in the cybersecurity risk, compliance and investigation world is the guiding principle for advisory firm StoneTurn.

StoneTurn partners Luke Tenery, Valerie Charles and Paresh Chiney, along with managing director Nathan Fisher, spoke with MESA about the company’s expertise in prevention, detection, mitigation and remediation, how major telecommunication companies worldwide have turned to it for compliance help, and why collaboration is crucial.

MESA: What was the impetus for StoneTurn, how did the company first come on the scene?

StoneTurn: StoneTurn is a global advisory firm providing high value expert consulting services to clients on complex engagements.

Founded in 2004, the company primarily focuses on risk, security, disputes, and compliance. Keeping these foundational cornerstones intact, we have moved ahead of industry demand and invested heavily in our growing Cybersecurity and Data Analytics practice areas.

StoneTurn now brings a multidisciplinary team of security leaders, cyber technology, risk, and investigative experts to help clients across the threat and risk continuum — from prevention to detection, mitigation through to remediation and transformation.

MESA: What are some of StoneTurn’s favorite use-case examples (that you can share), where clients made especially good use of your services?

StoneTurn: The firm is consistently engaged on very interesting and high-profile cases involving various issues including corporate investigations, disputes, IP protection/patent infringement, litigation advisory, compliance and monitoring, forensic technology, incident response, cyber investigations, and data analytics. While many of these cases tend to be reactive, we are equally engaged on proactive matters across our primary practice domains – threat assessments, premium threat intelligence, risk assessments, controls mapping.

However, our favorite use-cases are ones where an engagement requires StoneTurn professionals from different backgrounds, experience, and jurisdiction to collaborate and apply their different depth and expertise to the issue. These cases exemplify how StoneTurn can deliver value at the highest level: our professionals, each an expert in their respective fields, bring not only capability and coordination, but collaboration to the table.

MESA: In the technology and telecommunications spaces especially, which of StoneTurn’s services really shine, and stand out vs. competitors?

StoneTurn: StoneTurn’s professionals have deep expertise working with technology firms on complex disputes, including intellectual property, as well as risks and investigations. We assist with intellectual property valuation, patent, copyright and trademark infringement, trade secret misappropriation, and Lanham Act actions. Our forensic technology and data analytics professionals often work seamlessly with our other teams to assist clients in these matters.

StoneTurn’s professionals are experienced in assisting telecommunications companies with the challenges and opportunities they face in a global, fast-moving market. We assist with intellectual property valuation, trade secret misappropriation matters, due diligence for M&A and lending transactions, and investigations into alleged bribery and corruption, accounting fraud allegations and fraud, waste and abuse.

StoneTurn professionals have served as in-house compliance officers for three large telecommunication companies and recently served as global compliance counsel to a European telecommunication company related to a significant FCPA investigation.

MESA: For business leaders, what are the biggest cybersecurity challenges StoneTurn is seeing today, what do they need to be on top of, and how does StoneTurn help clients develop strategy and tackle incident response?

StoneTurn: For business leaders, the challenge is a decade old — and often funding for cybersecurity work doesn’t reach the CFO’s desk until after an incident has occurred. Enabling our clients in leadership roles to articulate that this is in fact a business challenge, and not an IT problem early and often is key.

MESA: How has the pandemic impacted StoneTurn’s business, in what ways has the company adjusted its services?

StoneTurn: In the face of numerous emerging and ongoing issues across the globe, including the COVID-19 global pandemic, StoneTurn rises to the challenge of broadening our capabilities and adopting new strategies to thrive in perpetually changing markets. By adding core competencies, we can continue to help our clients develop practical solutions to the complex challenges they face.

To that end, as part of our overall global growth strategy, we continue to assess expanding our global footprint to supplement our existing extensive global network. Although our firm is evolving, our collective values remain unchanged.

StoneTurn brings a team focused on delivering quality and a creative, collaborative approach to each engagement no matter the size or scope.

Throughout the pandemic, we have successfully adopted to working remotely and established all the required infrastructure to work efficiently and seamlessly with clients. We have learned not only to perform highly complex controls assessments, complex cyber consulting work and investigations (including interviews, data analytics and document review) remotely, but to take advantage of opportunities the virtual environment offers (e.g., confidentiality, ease of cross-border collaboration and reduced costs).

MESA: What’s next for StoneTurn, what advances or added services can we expect from the company on the horizon?

StoneTurn: We firmly believe that what makes us great as a firm is our people. We will continue to seek, recruit and hire the best people around. We have invested in expertise in compliance, technology, investigations, business intelligence and litigation support across our offices globally. We pride ourselves on collaboration to bring these skillsets together in a cohesive way and not in siloed teams.

Since the firm’s inception, StoneTurn has endeavored to build long-term, trusted relationships with clients and colleagues alike. Unlike similar organizations, StoneTurn operates as one firm, which allows us to deploy deeply targeted and focused teams to assist clients in solving their most complex business issues.