eDiscovery, the process of discovery in litigation in electronic formats, requires proactive management of information and records for potential eDiscovery requests, says Bryan Balfe, enterprise account manager at CommVault.
Various corporates, legal and IT stakeholders are facing a host of challenges with regards to finding the necessary data when required. These challenges include big data, data at the edge, early case assessments, long-term retention and defensible deletion as well as the need for governance.
Organisations who don’t manage their data, who don’t know what they have or who do not include processes and procedures to find data, will ultimately hinder eDiscovery and the need to find information as and when needed. Simplifying and understanding these challenges whilst implementing best technological practices can provide organisations with solutions to these areas that hinder eDiscovery.
Big data
big data plagues many stakeholders, from IT to Legal. While IT departments grapple with how to support complex big data environments, legal teams are tasked with making accommodations for big data in the already expensive eDiscovery process. How to best retain, access, discover and ultimately delete content in compliance with evolving regulations is a top of mind business concern.
With data located in multiple repositories, organisations struggle to find information when they need it. Overall, users are looking to gain a broader understanding of information assets and transform that intelligence into tangible business value. What is required is a solution that is hardware agnostic, secure, features a virtual repository where all backup and archive data is maintained.
Powerful and scalable content indexing also helps to search for millions of items in seconds.
Data at the edge
The rapidly increasing volume and complexity of data creates a challenge for organisations as they try to efficiently discover information needed to address corporate litigation, internal investigations, public information and audit requests.
One common pitfall organisations fall into is not capturing a comprehensive data set to search. Data that resides on laptops and desktops is often overlooked, ignored, or difficult to capture. A complete enterprise-class solution is required to deliver rapid, efficient and transparent desktop and laptop data protection. This will ensure critical end point data can be searched and efficiently discovered from a single repository.
Early case assessments
It is really important for legal teams to search their own collection, legal holds and reviews when the clock is ticking against performing Early Case Assessments or weighing the cost of discovery vs. settlement.
Organisations need to streamline the eDiscovery process across data silos as well as a broad collection of data sources. It is vital to have a solution that can ensure integrated collection, legal holds, search and disposition from various sources to streamline eDiscovery process across data silos.
Long-term retention and defensible deletion
Many organisations hoard unstructured data for decades. Growing file shares, email, desktops/laptops, even legacy backup tapes all contain many copies of aged data that no longer has business value. According to a survey at the Compliance, Governance and Oversight Counsel, up to 69 percent of data has no value to the enterprise*. Not only is this content taking up valuable and expensive space, but it can also become a liability if not properly managed.
Therefore, a solution that can reduce the cost, complexity and risk of storing business or compliance data through the use of content-based retention policies is essential. This will allow an organisation to only keep data that is important to the business and can reduce retention costs by up to 70 percent.
Need for governance-related services
Creating a sound records management strategy can be overwhelming for many companies. It requires coordinating the requirements of many functional departments spanning Legal, IT and even lines of business. Companies without a robust plan typically retain data forever or retain it haphazardly and ultimately incur high legal fees or settlements as a result. It is essential to map legal retention policies to storage, backup and archive environments.
Furthermore, these guidelines for data retention will also provide best practices for data preservation and deletion. Opting for a solution that offers the consulting services will assist the organisation create these policies and provide best practices to ensure relevant and accurate can be searched.
These are common e-Discovery challenges that all organisations face. However, opting for a solution that can assist with all eDiscovery challenges will ensure relevant data is retained, policies for legal retention are implemented and accurate results are delivered when need.
With ever-evolving rules and the digital landscape changing so dramatically, it’s important to stay in the know and opt for a solution and partner who can assist you streamline your organisations data.