Actfore

Cybersecurity | Data Mining | Incident Response

Firm Details

• Chief Executive Officer: Christian Geyer
• Vice President Data & Client Solutions: Daniel Lim
• Number of Data Scientists: 10
• Number of Data Analysts: 30
• Software Instance Capacity: 40 concurrent environments (scalable to 160+ with minimal provisioning time)
• Geographies Served: 140+ countries
• Processing Environment: 100% Onshore USA or Deployed Directly Within Client Infrastructure
• Certifications: ISO 27001:2022, HIPAA (Compliant), GDPR (Compliant)

Firm Overview

ACTFORE is a cybersecurity company established to solve one of the most pressing challenges in incident response: how to mine and process breached data at scale—without relying on offshore manual reviewers, reducing the risk of data exposure and compliance violations associated with sending sensitive information across borders. Founded by former executives from the finance and cybersecurity sectors, ACTFORE was purpose-built for speed, defensibility, and regulatory rigour. The firm’s proprietary AI-powered data mining platform enables organisations to identify sensitive, regulated, or disparate data across millions of files, in multiple locations, in a matter of hours. Unlike traditional review firms, ACTFORE does not rely on manual labour to scale; instead, additional software instances can be deployed instantly, delivering consistent accuracy and security regardless of breach size. Headquartered in Virginia, USA, ACTFORE has supported breach response efforts spanning over 140 countries and across sectors including healthcare, education, legal, financial services, and government.

Each ACTFORE software instance is capable of scanning and extracting sensitive data from approximately 150,000 files per day—equivalent to the output of 300 manual reviewers. This scalability eliminates the staffing delays and quality variability associated with traditional review teams, while delivering consistent, defensible results under strict regulatory timelines.

Main Areas of Practice | Offerings

• Inventory – Full Data Estate Discovery
  • Core Team: 1–2 Data Scientists, 1 Customer Success Representative (based in Virginia, USA)
  • Purpose: When clients lack visibility into which files were exfiltrated or accessed, ACTFORE's Inventory service provides comprehensive scanning across the entire data estate. This SKU identifies and maps every file—regardless of format or location—enabling legal teams to establish defensible scope before any extraction begins.
  • Example Work: ACTFORE inventoried 17TB of structured and unstructured data for a law firm following an M365 breach, producing a prioritised directory map within 72 hours to guide downstream efforts.
  • Contact: Daniel Lim, VP Data & Client Solutions | +001 703 220 8388

• Phase 1 – Programmatic Analysis & File Filtering-
  • Core Team: 1 Data Scientist, 1 Customer Success Representative (based in Virginia, USA)
  • Purpose: This phase involves automated textual analysis to determine which files contain sensitive data subject to jurisdictional disclosure requirements. The process includes advanced natural language processing (NLP) and OCR to make non-machine-readable documents searchable. Files deemed responsive are passed to Phase 2 for structured data element extraction.
  • Example Work: ACTFORE analysed over 1 million scanned PDFs and image-based files for a healthcare provider, filtering out non-responsive content and significantly reducing the downstream review volume.
  • Contact: Daniel Lim, VP Data & Client Solutions | +001 703 220 8388

• Phase 2 – Extraction & Notification List Generation
  • Core Team: 3+ Data Scientists & Data Analysts, 1 Project Manager, 1 Customer Success Representative
  • Purpose: Phase 2 is ACTFORE’s core extraction process, isolating personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), and other sensitive data from pre-filtered files. Outputs include structured notification lists tailored to applicable regulatory regimes. The entire process is fully automated and conducted onshore.
  • Example Work: ACTFORE processed 2 million multilingual files post-ransomware attack, generating a regulator-ready notification list in five business days with no reliance on manual tagging or OCR errors.
  • Contact: Daniel Lim, VP Data & Client Solutions | +001 703 220 8388

• Fixed-Fee End-to-End (Inventory to Final Report)
  • Core Team: Integrated team spanning data engineering, analysis, and client delivery
  • Purpose: This bundled service covers the full breach response lifecycle—from Inventory and Phase 1 filtering through Phase 2 extraction and final reporting—under a fixed fee. It is ideal for insurers, breach counsel, and clients seeking predictable scope, compressed timelines, and streamlined procurement. By removing handoffs and workstream pauses, this model enables continuous, parallel processing—resulting in significantly faster analysis and delivery.
  • Example Work: For a Fortune 500 manufacturer, ACTFORE deployed in three regions within an hour, processed 900,000 files in multiple languages, and delivered final subject-level reports across 8 jurisdictions by Day 8.
  • Contact: Daniel Lim, VP Data & Client Solutions | +001 703 220 8388

• B2B Data Classification – Owner-Aware Filtering
  • Core Team: 2 Engineers, 1 Lead Analyst
  • Purpose: This SKU is designed for breaches involving internal records or third-party client data. ACTFORE maps files to internal or external data owners using thematic analysis, metadata, access logs, and client-supplied inputs—minimising over-disclosure and allowing for selective notification or containment.
  • Example Work: ACTFORE assisted a multinational consultancy in classifying 300,000 internal documents by client and department, preserving legal privilege and meeting contractual confidentiality terms.
  • Contact: Daniel Lim, VP Data & Client Solutions | +001 703 220 8388

Definitive Expertise

• Chambers and Partners: Ranked Band 3 in our inaugural submission—a rare achievement.
• Gold Globee Award (2025): Winner – AI-Powered Incident Response & Management, recognised for innovation and measurable impact.
• Law.com | LegalWeek Leaders in Tech Law (2024): Winner – Data Privacy & Cybersecurity Innovation.
• LegalTech Breakthrough Awards (2024): Winner – Overall RegTech Company of the Year, for redefining regulatory response through automation and precision.
• Cyber Defense Global InfoSec Awards (2024): Triple Award Winner – Breach Incident Response, Cybersecurity Startup of the Year, and Cybersecurity Service Provider of the Year.

International Work | Selected Engagements

• Manufacturing Sector | Global Breach with Multi-Region Cloud Deployment
  • Global Data Breach at a Fortune 500 Industrial Manufacturer
  • Following a large-scale cyber incident involving the exfiltration of nearly 900,000 files, ACTFORE was engaged to identify impacted individuals and extract regulated data across geographically distributed systems. Within the first hour, ACTFORE deployed three Azure instances—across the US, UK, and East Asia—within the client’s own environment, enabling low-latency, jurisdiction-compliant processing close to where the data resided. Our multi-language engine was enabled for Japanese, Chinese, German, French, Italian, Greek, Spanish, and English, allowing high-fidelity extraction of full-text data elements across complex and varied document types. Hundreds of thousands of impacted individuals were identified across multiple continents. Final, country-specific subject reports were delivered by Day 8 of the engagement, supporting legal counsel and executive leadership in regulatory notifications and ransom payment decision-making.

• Education Sector | Multi-Jurisdictional Breach Involving Student Data
  • Global University Data Breach (United States + 139 Countries)
  • Following a third-party breach involving a major public university, ACTFORE was engaged to assess the exposure of sensitive student records spanning 139 countries. Our team rapidly deployed custom data mining models to identify regulated data across dozens of formats, including encrypted, incomplete, and corrupted files. Within days, we delivered notification-ready outputs aligned with both US state-level and global regulatory obligations—including GDPR, FERPA, and multiple APAC data regimes.

• Healthcare Sector | Multilingual PHI & PII Extraction After Ransomware
  • Ransomware Attack on a National Healthcare Network
  • After a ransomware attack disabled key systems at a major healthcare network, ACTFORE was brought in to conduct data exposure analysis across over 2 million files. Working against a tight disclosure timeline, we used our 8 instances of our AI-driven platform to extract personally identifiable information and health data in multiple languages. Our team delivered a compliant notification list within five business days—without relying on OCR, offshore reviewers, or manual tagging.

• Financial Services | Discovery Across Encrypted Legacy Files
  • Encrypted Data Discovery for a Multinational Financial Institution
  • A leading bank sought ACTFORE's expertise in identifying sensitive data across over 1.2 million encrypted and obfuscated files stored in legacy systems. Traditional tools failed to interpret the contents. ACTFORE applied advanced content-based heuristics to classify file types and extract GLBA-regulated data. Our findings supported legal counsel’s risk assessment and enabled a proactive client notification strategy in alignment with state and federal banking regulations.

• Legal Sector | Breach Involving Regulated and Privileged Materials
  • Law Firm Data Breach Involving Sensitive Government Matters
  • A top-tier law firm experienced a breach affecting multiple practice areas tied to government, defence, and financial clients. ACTFORE was engaged to conduct forensic scanning and data element extraction across structured and unstructured materials. Our platform’s ability to isolate sensitive information without relying on metadata ensured compliance with strict confidentiality protocols. Outputs were used to brief regulators and support remediation planning.

Practice Areas and Offices

Practice Areas:

• Inventory – Full Data Estate Discovery
• Phase 1 – Programmatic Analysis & Jurisdictional Filtering
• Phase 2 – Extraction & Notification List Generation
• Fixed-Fee End-to-End Breach Response
• B2B Data Classification – Owner-Aware Filtering

Offices:

• Head Office: Virginia, United States
• Processing Environments: Deployable globally via secure client-cloud (e.g. Azure, AWS); recent deployments in the US, UK, and East Asia
• Data Handling: 100% onshore (United States) unless deployed within client infrastructure abroad
• Certifications: ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II

Regions Serviced:

ACTFORE has supported breach response efforts across 140+ countries, including complex, multi-jurisdictional reviews requiring compliance with global data protection frameworks such as the GDPR (EU), HIPAA and GLBA (US), FERPA (US education), and the PDPA (Singapore). Engagements have also involved regulatory considerations in Canada, the Philippines (Data Privacy Act), Australia, and Latin America, among others.

Industries Serviced:

• Financial Services
• Healthcare & Life Sciences
• Education (Higher Ed & K-12)
• Legal Services & Law Firms
• Government & Defence Contractors
• Cloud/SaaS & Technology
• Manufacturing & Industrial