Managing Remote Workers: Don’t Get Caught Out in the Cold!
As you’ve undoubtedly noticed, this winter has broken records for snowfall across the country—we even had a few inches of snow here in Austin! But what a difference a week makes. As of this post, the high temperature in Austin should be near 80 today! As most of the country begins to thaw and come out of hibernation, it really is incredible to think about how this winter’s inclement weather forced many of us to work virtually from home…more often than usual. However, remote workers can create major information management concerns—opening organizations up to data breaches and complicating eDiscovery requests. According to the Financial Times:
Whether the corporate IT team is ready or not, a growing number of employees now exercise choice when it comes to the tools and services they use to get their jobs done. They are bringing their own mobile phones, tablet computers and laptops to work and using them to send and receive potentially sensitive business data.
In case of an eDiscovery request, organizations can be caught out in the cold dealing with remote desktops, laptops and tablet computers if they don’t have the right information management technology in place.
Typical desktop collections that rely on file-copying software can be cumbersome—Organizations often over-collect data, as up to 90 percent of desktop data is non-responsive to a legal matter. They also face significant difficulties properly preserving all metadata, taking enormous amounts of time to complete data collection activities, and having no automated method to restart the collection process after a network interruption or if a remote user disconnects while a collection is in progress. The result is that either a member of the IT staff or a consultant is dispatched to a remote location to perform custodian collection, or remote users are forced to ship their laptops into a main office for a few days.
Although we’re more than halfway through this winter, now would be a good time to define an information management policy for your remote workers so you’ll be prepared for that next big storm. Some things for you to consider should include:
- Define, document and publish an official company policy on working remotely, including security, network and information access;
- Ensure that you have sufficient access points and bandwidth to support your remote staff;
- Implement a desktop collection capability as part of your information management strategy to meet any regulatory compliance, eDiscovery and security obligations.
Let’s hope that Punxsutawney Phil is right and we’re in for an early spring, at least here in Austin it looks that way!
Share TOPICS: desktop collection, eDiscovery, information management, litigation readiness
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