Nico Van der Beken

About me

Welcome to my site!

I am a "semi-retired" forensic expert (by "force") living in sunny Ticino in the beautiful south of Switzerland.

Growing up in Belgium, I studied to become an engineer in Electronics Engineering in Kortrijk, West-Flanders.

In collaboration with ESA, the European Space Agency, I prototyped a telecommunications satellite error-reduction component for my thesis.

I left Belgium and moved to Switzerland in 1999 and acquired Swiss citizenship in 2015.

Today, I have over 25 years of working experience in ICT and have been helping my clients deal with crisis situations for the past fifteen years.

My first job was in industrial software engineering but I moved quickly to the field of business software.

Whilst leading a national team of 12 business software developers at PwC (myself being based in Lausanne), I pursued an executive MBA in Technology Management at the University of Fribourg, I wrote a thesis on “Forensic Readiness” and moved to Zurich to become the lead of PwC’s Forensic Technology team.

As a Forensic expert, I worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte and KPMG and also co-founded the Swiss practice for Stroz Friedberg, a renowned US investigations and security boutique firm.

I have led numerous investigations related to fraud, employee misconduct, anti-trust violations, corruption, data leakage and data breaches, cyber incidents, as well as a wide range of regulatory and compliance work.

In particular, I have directed numerous highly complex banking fraud and regulatory investigations using advanced analytics and e-discovery techniques, incl. machine learning and predictive coding and also successfully delivered some of the most significant cross-border investigations related to corruption and anti-trust in the manufacturing, consumer business, and life science industry across Europe.

I frequently assist major law firms with my specialist knowledge in Computer & Mobile Forensics, Data Analytics, e-Discovery, Cyber & Data breach Response, Diligence, Corporate Intelligence and Investigations.

I love to travel, my favourite destinations being the Mediterranean, South-East Asia and Africa.

I grew up speaking Dutch (Flemish), then moved to the French speaking part of Switzerland for over 10 years where I “perfected” my French, then moved to Zurich where I had to learn German, and now, after my recent move to the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, I am learning Italian.

I am currently recovering from a sudden cardiac arrest and slowly but steadily getting back on my feet, offering my experience as an independent advisor, non-executive board member and entrepreneur in the investigations sector. Read more about my professional activities here and about my sudden cardiac arrest here.