StoredIQ Extends Information Governance to the Cloud with Support for Microsoft Office 365

Seeing growing customer demand for eDiscovery, Records Management, and Compliance solutions for cloud-based data, StoredIQ has announced support for cloud-based Exchange and SharePoint residing within Microsoft Office 365 (formerly Microsoft Business Productivity Office Suite – BPOS). With this extended capability, Microsoft Office 365 customers can utilize StoredIQ to gain the same deep visibility and understanding of their cloud-based email and SharePoint data as they do with StoredIQ’s on-premise information governance solutions.

Customers, including a major U.S. car manufacturer, are using StoredIQ to quickly connect to Microsoft Office 365 to identify, collect and manage Exchange email and SharePoint data for responding to eDiscovery requests, applying records policies, and adhering to regulatory compliance mandates. As a result, StoredIQ provides enterprises with actionable information governance solutions to realize the benefits of cloud computing while still fulfilling their legal and compliance requirements.

According to 451 Research, cloud computing continues to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 24 percent and will reach $16.7 billion in revenue by 2013.

As enterprises continue moving data to the cloud, information governance challenges are becoming more complex. StoredIQ’s Platform connects to Microsoft Office 365 and indexes its data, combining the ability to identify, collect, and manage cloud-based data for legal discovery and records management into an integrated information governance application as a means of preempting litigation and reducing potential legal risks associated with cloud data storage.

– David Horrigan, analyst, eDiscovery and information governance at 451 Research

As a way to minimize storage costs and IT investments, we are seeing more and more customers move data to the cloud. Whether on-premise or in the cloud, StoredIQ can provide a highly scalable solution for governing all enterprise data and ensure that data placed in the cloud is discoverable for litigation, regulatory inquiries, and records retention scheduling.

StoredIQ’s support for Microsoft Office 365 includes:

• Identification and collection of data from both Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft SharePoint Online
• Integration with Active Directory
• Auto–detection of both mailboxes and SharePoint sub-sites in the cloud
• Connection throttling to Microsoft Office 365 in order to maximize network efficiency
• Managed security and access, along with automatic activity and chain–of–custody reporting

For more information about our actionable information governance solutions – for on premise or cloud-based data – please email info@storediq.com.

2012: The Year for Information Governance

2012: The Year for Information Governance

According to an article by Mark Brunelli, Senior News Editor with SearchDataManagement.com, a growing number of organizations are realizing that data governance is more important than ever and will take center stage in 2012. Based on a SearchDataManagement.com 2011 Reader survey, 77% of respondents either have, or are planning to implement, a data governance program – a 9% increase over last year.

In the article, Brunelli interviews Sunil Soares, director of information governance with IBM’s software group. According to Soares, “It’s [information governance] a trend that shows no signs of slowing as 2012 approaches. The increase in awareness can be attributed to business users who are at last taking ownership of data. In other words, organizations have realized that data problems are business problems.”

Similarly, according to the 2011 eDiscoveryJournal and ViaLumina Information Governance Survey, most people view information governance as an umbrella for multiple disciplines including eDiscovery, records management, security, compliance, storage and archiving, risk management, and privacy. The majority of survey respondents revealed that they are investigating Information Governance and actively working to determine how to apply it to their organizations.

As 2012 looms near, new regulatory mandates such as FINRA 4511 and 4512, and the Dodd-Frank Act put a renewed focus on the need for information governance solutions. Fred Pulzello and Sonali Bhavsar wrote in an article for Information Management magazine, “Companies that proactively invest in establishing information governance policies, procedures, and technology will improve the efficiency of their compliance programs and will be in the best shape to adapt quickly to the new rules and regulations and manage the risks associated with doing business in this environment.”

StoredIQ provides actionable information governance solutions, enabling organizations to gain visibility and control over business-critical information to meet their eDiscovery, records management, compliance, and storage management requirements. With StoredIQ, legal, records managers, compliance officers, or IT can utilize a suite of purpose-built applications that arm them with the information intelligence needed to minimize the cost and risk of governing the ever increasing amount of unstructured data stored across the enterprise.

As 2012 approaches we’d like to know, what are some of the biggest information governance challenges your organization faces? eDiscovery, Storage Optimization, Compliance, Records Management? With StoredIQ, information governance doesn’t have to be a boil the ocean approach; ROI can be attained through existing IT and compliance initiatives, or trigger events like eDiscovery or regulatory response. So as you plan your 2012 information governance initiatives, there is great value in knowing what data you have and where it resides, whether the efforts are reactive or proactive, or apply to legacy data or new policies. Use of information intelligence technology like StoredIQ is critical to informing, improving, and maintaining adequate data governance.

eDiscovery: Incremental, Single-Instance Collections vs. Data Re-Use

I recently read an article in LTN, authored by Evan Kobletz, covering the Guidance product announcement – “Guidance Adds Data Re-use Feature to EnCase eDiscovery”. After some discussion at StoredIQ, we’re actually pretty excited about the coverage. It sheds light on capability that we’ve had for years now, and probably don’t talk enough about. In fact, the article also highlights several competitors that still don’t have it. The StoredIQ term for ‘Data Re-use’ is ‘Incremental, Single-Instance Collection’, but setting aside semantics, we believe it’s a fundamental component for conducting thorough, legally sound eDiscovery collections.

What does this mean to eDiscovery customers? The first time a file is relevant to a case, we’ll take a forensically sound copy and place it on a retention server for preservation with a litigation hold tag specific to the given matter, without altering the metadata and without interrupting end users. If it’s an ongoing case, we’ll perform incremental collections – meaning that we’ll only get another copy if that file has been changed (or if other new relevant files are created). When another case crops up, and the same file is once again relevant, StoredIQ is aware that the file is already on retention and instead of taking the time, bandwidth and storage space to collect another copy StoredIQ just places an additional hold tag on the file. If your company is in a highly litigious industry or has a number of serial litigants, you can imagine the savings this can add up to over time. Only when all matters for a given file are concluded, and the obligation for legal hold is removed, will the file be available for disposition from the repository.

Possibly because StoredIQ has had this capability for quite some time, we’ve taken for granted that incremental, single-instance collection is a standard feature of any intelligent eDiscovery technology that has a collections component. And more importantly, a feature that eDiscovery customers should consider closely. Note that the article also mentions that this feature also enables users to “search collection sets from previous litigation”. That statement alone makes me wonder how many case collections have been jeopardized by not having the capability to search and produce data from the preservation location used by previous and simultaneous, on-going cases?

On a broader scale, in the LTN article, Kobletz, states, “Data reuse is a growing trend in the e-discovery industry.” We at StoredIQ actually see ‘data reuse’, to use the same term, as a trend that goes well beyond eDiscovery. The same data that your legal team needs to identify and collect for a legal matter, is also the same data that your records management team needs to classify, your IT team needs to store and manage, and your compliance officers need to govern. At the end of the day, your corporate data is all being ‘re-used’ by multiple departments – not just the legal team for multiple matters.

What companies need is the ability to identify, classify, manage, and act on their data assets – to provide value across the entire organization. That’s something you won’t get from Guidance, or any point solution eDiscovery product. At StoredIQ, we’re focused on delivering powerful information governance products that can provide the comprehensive data insight and control that corporate counsel, compliance managers, and  records managers need to make the best and most informed decisions, while meeting the stringent requirements that IT departments demand.