When involved in legal action, documentation is key to a strong case. Unfortunately, many companies don't have the right policies, technologies or cultural attitudes to develop a stable and searchable data storage solution. The time to build such system is now, not when facing an imminent court case.
The Legal Value Of Documentation
One of the best weapons in a legal arsenal is a stockpile of comprehensive and objective documentation to support a position. Information can support a patent challenge, prove a company was not negligent prior to a safety incident, or deflect a wrongful termination suit. No matter how professionally and ethically a company does business, they can always be the target of legal action. Without a strong defense, organizations may be forced to accept liability even if they did nothing wrong.
In addition, businesses may be drawn into legal battles on the part of other entities. Customers, employees, vendors and other partners may subpoena company records to support their own cases. If the organization cannot provide the documentation, it not only hurts the case, but can open the organization up to further legal action.
Documentation: More Is Not Always Better
In response to these fears, a common mistake is to simply save everything. After all, if every single written word ever produced or received by the company is present, they can support any legal action. This attitude was prevalent in pre-computer age, and is even more so now. Hard drives are cheap, so it becomes easy to keep records that date back to when the company computers still had vacuum tubes.
Storage may be cheap, but supporting technologies are not. As the mass of information grows, so do backup times. Suddenly, nightly backups don't finish in time. Faster and more expensive backup technologies are used. Bigger data centers are needed with all their associated power, cooling and personnel costs - all to save emails about the company Christmas party in 1984. But a bigger problem is a painfully slow eDiscovery process. Every legal action requires sifting through terabytes of useless information to find the few pieces of evidence to support the case.
How to Speed Up eDiscovery Companies need to trim down their information archives by implementing and following information retention policies. They must decide what information should be kept, and for how long. Some of the choices will be dictated by government regulations, while others will be more flexible.
Centralized software applications make the process of storing and retrieving information easier. Many companies are looking into Microsoft Exchange 2010 migration due to the many information tools in the package, but don't have the IT infrastructure to support the product. Instead they partner with IT service providers who have the hardware needed to improve reliability, as well as the experience to facilitate the Exchange 2010 migration process.
With a smaller mass of documentation to search through, plus the latest generation of information search tools at their disposal, the legal discovery process takes a fraction of the time it used to.
Backups Are Not Archives
Another mistake often made is to assume the nightly backups serve as an archive process. This is not true. Backing up is a disaster recovery process. The goal is to make a copy of the information in case the original is lost or corrupted. All information is copied, from the trivial to the critical, and is stored in an unindexed mass of data. Location and restoration of single files is slow.
Archiving moves the original information to a secure environment such as a hosted archiving solution. Only important documents are archived, and all information is archived for rapid searches and easy retrieval. The hosted archiving solution information is backed up, but due to the slow rate of change can be backed up less often than information on the company's primary servers.
Archiving Saves Money
As important information is moved off the main servers onto a hosted archiving solution archiving solution and trivial information is deleted completely, the amount of information to be backed up drops significantly -backups are faster, require less equipment, and fewer personnel hours than before.
Archiving significantly improves the speed of the legal eDiscovery process. Not only does less information have to be searched to find relevant documentation, but the fact the archives are indexed and well organized makes it even easier to locate the data quickly. Most importantly, the organization has more time to plan for legal challenges and develop a winning strategy.
The Legal Value Of Documentation
One of the best weapons in a legal arsenal is a stockpile of comprehensive and objective documentation to support a position. Information can support a patent challenge, prove a company was not negligent prior to a safety incident, or deflect a wrongful termination suit. No matter how professionally and ethically a company does business, they can always be the target of legal action. Without a strong defense, organizations may be forced to accept liability even if they did nothing wrong.
In addition, businesses may be drawn into legal battles on the part of other entities. Customers, employees, vendors and other partners may subpoena company records to support their own cases. If the organization cannot provide the documentation, it not only hurts the case, but can open the organization up to further legal action.
Documentation: More Is Not Always Better
In response to these fears, a common mistake is to simply save everything. After all, if every single written word ever produced or received by the company is present, they can support any legal action. This attitude was prevalent in pre-computer age, and is even more so now. Hard drives are cheap, so it becomes easy to keep records that date back to when the company computers still had vacuum tubes.
Storage may be cheap, but supporting technologies are not. As the mass of information grows, so do backup times. Suddenly, nightly backups don't finish in time. Faster and more expensive backup technologies are used. Bigger data centers are needed with all their associated power, cooling and personnel costs - all to save emails about the company Christmas party in 1984. But a bigger problem is a painfully slow eDiscovery process. Every legal action requires sifting through terabytes of useless information to find the few pieces of evidence to support the case.
How to Speed Up eDiscovery Companies need to trim down their information archives by implementing and following information retention policies. They must decide what information should be kept, and for how long. Some of the choices will be dictated by government regulations, while others will be more flexible.
Centralized software applications make the process of storing and retrieving information easier. Many companies are looking into Microsoft Exchange 2010 migration due to the many information tools in the package, but don't have the IT infrastructure to support the product. Instead they partner with IT service providers who have the hardware needed to improve reliability, as well as the experience to facilitate the Exchange 2010 migration process.
With a smaller mass of documentation to search through, plus the latest generation of information search tools at their disposal, the legal discovery process takes a fraction of the time it used to.
Backups Are Not Archives
Another mistake often made is to assume the nightly backups serve as an archive process. This is not true. Backing up is a disaster recovery process. The goal is to make a copy of the information in case the original is lost or corrupted. All information is copied, from the trivial to the critical, and is stored in an unindexed mass of data. Location and restoration of single files is slow.
Archiving moves the original information to a secure environment such as a hosted archiving solution. Only important documents are archived, and all information is archived for rapid searches and easy retrieval. The hosted archiving solution information is backed up, but due to the slow rate of change can be backed up less often than information on the company's primary servers.
Archiving Saves Money
As important information is moved off the main servers onto a hosted archiving solution archiving solution and trivial information is deleted completely, the amount of information to be backed up drops significantly -backups are faster, require less equipment, and fewer personnel hours than before.
Archiving significantly improves the speed of the legal eDiscovery process. Not only does less information have to be searched to find relevant documentation, but the fact the archives are indexed and well organized makes it even easier to locate the data quickly. Most importantly, the organization has more time to plan for legal challenges and develop a winning strategy.
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