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Records Maanagement: eMail No Longer the Most Requested Record Type for eDiscovery
As more enterprise data is being stored in content applications like SharePoint and Alfresco, and data from Social Media applications are increasingly being requested for eDiscovery. Symmantec recently reported that e-mail is no longer the most requested type of eDiscovery record requested. The report follows closely on the heels of Symmantec’s acquisition of Clearwell eDiscovery this past May.
The report looked at the distribution of record types now most frequently being requested in organizations for eDiscovery purposes:
- 67 percent. Electronic Files and Documents
- 61 percent. Database and application data
- 58 percent. Emails
- 51 percent. SharePoint files
- 44 percent. Instant Messages and Text Messages
- 41 percent. Social Media
Symantec e-discovery attorney and former vice president at Clearwell Dean Gonsowski, said that “The fact that email is no longer the primary source of information for an eDiscovery request is a significant change from what has been the norm over the past several years,” said Dean Gonsowski, eDiscovery Counsel at Symantec. “With the wide variety of sources in play, including loose documents, structured data, SharePoint content and even social media, it is not enough for legal and IT to simply focus upon email alone. It’s critical for the two departments to work together to develop and implement an effective information retention policy.”
The Symmantec report recommendations some best practices:
- Define and implement Records Information (RIM) Policies for your organization
- Follow retention policies and delete data based on retention schedule (20 percent of organizations ignore their RIM policies and still retain everything.)
- Have separate backup and archive procedures. Backup is for recovery. Archiving is for Discovery. 30-60 days is the longest that data should be backed up.
- Adopt Records Management software to manage legal holds. Manual implementation of legal holds is too error prone.
- Conduct periodic audits and readiness exercises to validate that RIM practices are in place, ready and working.
- eDiscovery is moving past email reviews. Expand your data managed to include social media, cloud data and instant messages.
