Alumni Graham Henley and John Hunter have made a business out of helping people recover their precious items, with a piece of software based on the same technology used in computer forensics.
Former Federal police officer Graham says that he and John (ex-NSW police) first got the idea for the piece of software while working in PwC’s Forensic Services.
“The work that we were doing was computer forensics, which is all about recovering evidence, explaining how that evidence came to be, and bringing that information before a court,” explains Graham. “We realised the tools and techniques that were being used in the field of computer forensics hadn’t moved into that area of commercial data recovery.”
They recruited John’s brother, a physicist, to help develop the software, and began selling it on the Internet. When it started to become a commercial viability, the pair made the difficult decision to leave PwC, which they found “very interesting and very challenging”, to pursue their own business.
GetData was launched, the software was relaunched as Recover My Files, and a number of other software items were added to their range, including one which will wipe files so completely that even Recover My Files won’t get them back. Today, the business has more than 110,000 customers, with products retailing in about 9 countries, and an estimated turn-over this year of about $3 million.