You’re in an eDiscovery case – what now?

The situation is not an uncommon one. Worldwide, eDiscovery standards are being adopted as legislation. There’s a common requirement across the USA and EU that organizations have an obligation, upon legal request by a court, to present any and all files relevant to an ongoing care. This sounds simple on the face of it but includes intricacies of storage, identification and retrieval that lead multiple organizations yearly to have to ask themselves “we’re the subject of an eDiscovery case – what now?”

What is eDiscovery?

As outlined in the AIIM article on that subject as well as in our previous articles on the subject, eDiscovery (short for electronic discovery) is defined as the process of discovery (the initial phase of litigation where the parties in a dispute are required to provide each other relevant information) carried out in electronic formats. It encompasses what most often is referred to as electronically stored information, or ESI.

This can encompass a wide swathe of data depending on the case and how they determine relevance. ESI can be instant messaging chats (including Teams, Slack and other coworking systems), emails, documents, accounting databases, CAD/CAM files, Web sites or other forms of information.

When this ESI is identified as relevant to a court case, it falls on the owner to retrieve, organize and present it in a timely manner. This can be a challenge and take significant time and resources to do, simply thanks to the massive volumes of content in question.

How can you make this job easier for yourself?

The easiest and most efficient way to mitigate the costs and difficulties of an eDiscovery case is to have prepared well ahead of time by implementing a program or system that can perform records management, as well as a coherent set of retention policies and well-organized storage.

In practice, this will almost always mean having an archive that allows for long-term storage of information that may become relevant in the future, including all internal and external communications that your organization has engaged in.

Archive smarter with contentACCESS

The most effective approach for organizations is to find software that fulfils as many roles as possible with a single solution. Look no further than contentACCESS Archive and Backup. With our intelligent solution, you can easily set retention policies that will automatically retain critical data, while our flexible and comprehensive full-text search makes identification and retrieval of required information simple.

Besides filling a company’s eDiscovery needs, the presence of an archive and backup solution is an invaluable aid in keeping your company internal data secured from both internal and external threats. And thanks to contentACCESS’ ease of access and ease of search, we can help your company take your employee productivity and efficiency to greater heights.

Do you want to learn more about contentACCESS and what it can do for your company? TECH-ARROW is here to help! Contact us and schedule a free meeting with our team of specialists to discuss how we can best set your business up for success.

 

Take the best steps to protect your data – with TECH-ARROW.

Archive all your O365 data with contentACCESS

by Matúš Koronthály