Computer Security Awareness Training

When an organization is subpoenaed for documents in litigation, its IT Department is under a lot of pressure to find every relevant document or email, including disaster-recovery backups stored off-site. An oversight can result in additional legal costs and search expenses in the millions of dollars. To avoid this, it is imperative that IT and legal departments to work hand in hand to build policies for Electronic Discovery and a plan for execution when litigation hits.

A good way to avoid oversight is by creating E-Discovery Teams with both IT and legal principals. These E-Discovery Teams are responsible to set policies for data retention, preservation, and discover-ready organization.

Andrew Conry-Murray, in his InformationWeek article on June 1st, demonstrates how three different companies pulled together the key people needed to reduce the complexity and cost of E-Discovery. He also highlights three phases of discovery including The Identification Phase, Preservation Phase, and Collection Challenge.

The Identification Phase is focused on finding all sources of electronic data that may be relevant. Defining relevant search terms will provide the best results. The Preservation Phase is the process of making sure that potentially relevant information is not destroyed (example, past employee email, HR records, and work files) from all sources, including PCs, shared files, and removable media. Data can be copied and moved to a secure repository, or preserved in place with legal holds on who can open, write to, or copy the data. The Collection Challenge requires that relevant data is gathered and delivered to attorneys. Based on legal analysis, the search may be expanded

Though solid E-Discovery policies will not guarantee a win in court, they can ensure that a case is not lost based on oversight or a misstep with data identification, collection, and preservation.

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