Despite the high cost of its painstaking preservation and storage, much of this data will never be relevant to any legal case. Indeed, according to a 2009 survey by Framingham, Mass.-based IDC, 60 to 80 percent of the information retained by corporations in America has no value from a business or legal perspective.

Legal departments have historically focused on the ‘right side’ of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) – the analysis and review stages. However, if the quality of collected data in the review platform is unnecessary, insufficient, spoiled, or irrelevant; this significantly increases an organization’s legal cost and risk.

Kiker goes on to say… the best approach for many companies is to get serious about cleaning up their information environments. By “taking out the trash” in a major way, companies stand to make big cuts in their annual data-storage bills, which can also run into the six figures. This also enables them to more quickly and more accurately identify potentially relevant information for the attorneys to sift through during a review process, potentially lowering their legal bills.

Legal teams are increasingly realizing the business value and ROI from strengthening their company’s ‘left-side’ EDRM capabilities and understand that sound information governance practices result in highly targeted and effective eDiscovery.

The article points out that shrinking the overall stack of data is a good start to minimizing eDiscovery costs, but companies also need to find all the relevant information contained in their data. He says:

Data mapping offers a way to solve this problem. The basic idea is to create a master index that spells out exactly where content is stored. Surprisingly, many companies have never taken this critical information management step.

In fact, Barry Murphy was reflecting on the Carmel Valley eDiscovery Conference and commented in his blog: Get specific. Know where data lives and do the data maps.  It’s impossible to preserve data if you don’t know where it is.

At StoredIQ we couldn’t agree more. To prove it, during the month of August, StoredIQ is extending a promotional offer for our data assessment and mapping service. The first 10 qualified companies will pay only $10,000, a savings of $5,000 off list price.

StoredIQ Data Assessment Services provide unprecedented visibility into the unstructured data across the enterprise. This invaluable service quickly gives organizations critical understanding of their business content to make more informed decisions about the management, retention, and disposition of their data.

To learn more about this offer and to take the first step toward managing your escalating ESI-related costs and risk – contact us today!

Planning for FINRA Compliance
With the effective date only a few months away, broker-dealers will need to be prepared to show updated policies and procedures with supporting systems to be ready for their 2012 FINRA audit. Compliance officers should ask:

• Do we have the systems capabilities in place to identify, track and preserve the required records?
• Is now a good time to perform a holistic data assessment review of the information and records your firm currently has stored across all data repositories, content management systems and archives?
• Are you able to implement defensible data deletion policies as prescribed by the new FINRA requirements?
  Can your current data storage and archiving capabilities withstand the volumes for day-to-day reporting and historical archiving? If not, how can you strategically clean up your data storage?
• Will new technologies be needed to assist, and what does the implementation timetable look like to be in compliance by December?

Meeting FINRA Requirements with StoredIQ
StoredIQ’s Information Governance solution provides broker-dealers with a comprehensive, secure and efficient approach to meeting their FINRA information governance needs. With StoredIQ, companies can manage risk and contain costs by leveraging automated compliance and governance policies.  The result is an efficient and cost-effective answer for today’s highly regulated business world.

By implementing StoredIQ now and planning accordingly, broker-dealers can be in compliance by the December 5th FINRA implementation date and ready for a 2012 FINRA audit examination.

To learn more, download the StoredIQ FINRA Solution Sheet or contact us for more information.

Most eDiscovery solutions are limited in their visibility and scope to just SharePoint Document Libraries and a subset of metadata. They also lack the intelligence to distinguish between multiple versions of documents, and may return very large and inflated data sets for content analysis. In contrast, the StoredIQ solution fully supports all core SharePoint object types and all associated metadata including: Blogs, Wikis, Comments, Discussion Boards, Calendars, Tasks, Contacts, Issue Trackers, Announcements, Surveys, Links, Project Tasks, Picture Libraries, Records Center and Document Libraries.

For a demonstration and more information, visit StoredIQ this week at LegalTech West in Los Angeles – booth #204 – or visit www.StoredIQ.com to download eDiscovery for SharePoint resources.

StoredIQ eDiscovery for SharePoint Resources:

• Taneja Group White Paper: StoredIQ Flagship eDiscovery for SharePoint
• IDC Product Flash: StoredIQ Addresses Information Management Opportunity Around SharePoint Content
• StoredIQ SharePoint Technical Brief
• StoredIQ Extends Industry-Leading eDiscovery and Information Management Support for Microsoft SharePoint

“While the debate on the usefulness and effectiveness of ECA continues, it should be noted that how the term is defined continues to evolve. Some of the service providers adapted quickly enough to have ECA as part of their “arsenal” a few years ago. Many of these tools were designed to filter metadata after collection and help the company decide how much a case will cost. This is a noble objective, but not completely in line with the original intent of ECA — which was to help an organization determine its risk exposure and make strategic decisions about a case based on that analysis.”

We couldn’t agree more. In fact, we’ve been talking about the importance of performing ECA at an earlier phase of the EDRM for a while now. We believe that for ECA to have its greatest potential impact it needs to be performed during the identification phase of EDRM, prior to collections. StoredIQ’s ECA technology, Analyze Anywhere, indexes unstructured electronic data and makes it available for searching and analysis without affecting metadata or content, prior to any movement or collection of data.  This ability to do ECA on data “in the wild” allows legal counsel to assess the merits of a dispute, formulate a legal strategy, and make decisions concerning the matter significantly faster than post-collection ECA. Additionally, it makes the data set that is ultimately produced for downstream, formal review not only qualitatively enriched and context aware, but also considerably smaller, thereby significantly reducing legal costs and risks. According to Rudoy:

“The premise of early case assessment is to give legal teams the ability to conduct up-front, fast, intelligent data gathering, with probative queries on the dataset to reduce it to a relevant universe that can be assessed.  Legal teams have a need to see “what they got” faster than what traditional EDD services typically can provide. “

StoredIQ can form threads, comparisons, relationships and statistics much faster than human reviewers can. Our user interface includes dynamic visuals, detailed reports and an intuitive dashboard to accomplish in-depth analysis of once unwieldy amounts of discovered data.  As the data set is culled —by custodian, file type, email domain, date range, key terminology, etc. — the StoredIQ Scoreboard presents a running count of the files retained (and eliminated from consideration) and automatically calculates the potential savings from the downstream review cycle.

By accomplishing ECA near the beginning of the eDiscovery workflow, ECA finally achieves the goals it originally set out to accomplish for improved legal strategy decisions and cost reduction.

As part of the AIIM Info360 eDiscovery conference track, StoredIQ will be discussing the risks and costs of inefficient information management. Our goal is to help attendees understand the value of information intelligence across all their data sources, so information can be organized and managed according to specific policies and leveraged as an asset for eDiscovery, records management, governance and compliance.

WHERE: Walter E. Washington Convention Center —Washington, DC

WHEN: Wednesday, March 23 from 1:00 PM – 1:40 PM ET

TOPIC: Synchronize Your Approach to Information Management

DESCRIPTION: Organizations are forced to deal with vast and increasing amounts of unstructured information. IT departments have to operate on tighter budgets, and managing data is overwhelming. Organizations take a siloed approach to information management, dealing with eDiscovery, compliance and data storage separately; resulting in higher cost and increased business risk. Join StoredIQ vice president of field operations, Ellis Ishaya, as he discusses:

• How a synchronized approach to records and information management enables organizations to cut costs and gain more insight and control over their critical data needs, especially in today’s highly-regulated business world.
• How to properly find, classify and manage all information according to business value and risk.
• How to ensure a comprehensive, secure and efficient approach to meeting their governance and compliance needs.
• How to automate retention rules according to existing records retention schedules.

In addition to presenting, StoredIQ will exhibit our information intelligence solution at booth 1633 during the three-day event. Booth visitors can register to win a free data assessment service. Attendees that would like to schedule a meeting in advance should contact Jacqui Galow at info@storediq.com or +1 512-334-3156. For more information about AIIM Info360 or to register, visit www.aiimexpo.com.

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:

1. Define, document and publish an official company policy on working remotely, including security, network and information access;
2. Ensure that you have sufficient access points and bandwidth to support your remote staff;
3. 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!

We wanted to better understand what data we have, where it resides and determine how we can better manage our information across the enterprise and do so in a proactive manner. With StoredIQ we are able to make intelligent decisions about the state of our data based on corporate policies and legal discovery requirements. – Tony Balding, vice president, software solutions at Madison

From a GC’s perspective, we needed a solution that allowed me to work closely with the IT department, analyze the data to determine the merits of a dispute quickly, understand related review cost and provide a defensible audit trail. StoredIQ exceeded that expectation with their unique capabilities, such as analyzing data where it natively resides, the user-friendly legal and IT workflow, and the scoreboard that keeps track of review costs as data is identified, preserved and collected. – Judy Michael, assistant vice president, legal, asset and risk management at Madison

Market-leading companies use StoredIQ to respond rapidly and efficiently to legal matters, litigation, and investigations. Utilizing StoredIQ, corporate legal teams can locate, analyze and act upon unstructured electronically stored information much more comprehensively and efficiently. As a result, companies can better manage their legal risk and reduce expenses, while formulating superior legal strategies. With StoredIQ, companies:

• Quickly locate matter-relevant electronic documents with advanced search technology
• Analyze electronic documents in-place with detailed data topology maps, advanced analytics, and precise data explorers
• Preserve and collect data to a secure legal hold repository, preserving all metadata and business context
• Perform first-pass reviews on documents before exporting data downstream
• Act on and manage potentially relevant data in a legally defensible manner with audit trails and a robust chain of custody

StoredIQ’s award-winning solution streamlines eDiscovery processes for legal and IT, allows for early case analysis “in the Wild,” and provides complete cost predictability.

Sessions within the Risk Management Track include:

•    A Case Study: Are You Ready for E-Discovery?
•    Cost Containment: Preservation Techniques for Litigation
•    The Nuts and Bolts of E-Discovery
•    Access Control and Permissions in Electronic Record Keeping Systems
•    Integrating E-Discovery Services into Corporate Records Management Programs
•    Privacy for Records Management Professionals
•    E-Discovery On the Move: Mobile Communications
•    SharePoint and E-Discovery Readiness
•    E-Discovery: Defining an Architectural Roadmap

The need to understand what information exists, and manage it accordingly, has grown exponentially.  Whether required for legal eDiscovery, compliance mandates, internal governance, or government regulation, fundamentally, this mountain of murky data now represents enormous risk and cost to a company.

Here at StoredIQ we are focused on delivering powerful information management solutions 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 business decisions, while meeting the stringent requirements that IT departments demand.

In addition to sponsoring the Risk Management conference sessions, StoredIQ will exhibit our intelligent information management solution at booth 930 during the two-day event. Booth visitors can register to win a free data assessment service from StoredIQ. Attendees that would like to schedule a meeting in advance should contact Brent Pohl at info@storediq.com or +1 512-334-3107. To register online for ARMA International, visit the conference website.

Working for an information management company I might be a bit jaded toward the lack of visibility TV dramas provide into the discovery process. However I do know it’s unlikely you’re going to find key evidence or a “smoking gun” wadded up in a trash can in the bad guy’s office – though it seems to happen a lot on TV. No, more than likely you are going to have to wade through terabytes or even petabyes of electronic data from multiple custodians spread across email, file shares, laptops, document management systems, etc.  Your first thoughts are probably, “How long is this going to take and how much is it going to cost?”

Organizations must expect the unexpected and be prepared to deal with several concurrent matters with varying electronic discovery requirements. In a recent whitepaper from Brian Babineau, senior analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, he discusses the often unpredictable and challenging eDiscovery process – and the opportunities that in-house eDiscovery solutions provide for real world improvement including:

• Incorporate All Data – ensure that your eDiscovery solution is comprehensive and goes beyond email to include other corporate ESI sources – locating the data you need to make informed case strategy decisions and minimizing your risk for non-disclosure sanctions.

• Timeliness Matter – other than meeting tight deadlines, organizations can benefit from speeding up the eDiscovery process by meeting the duty to preserve early, more accurately predicting case budgets, preparing for initial case assessments, and reducing reliance on outsourced review resources when pressed for time.

• Resource Scalability – utilizing a holistic eDiscovery solution, corporations can ensure that all departments and users involved in the legal discovery process are not overburdened by disparate tools and technologies, and that productivity isn’t impacted as the amount of corporate information and number of matters continues to grow.

As Mr. Babineau states in the paper, “Electronic discovery, when supported by the right technology has the potential to deliver benefits greater than a simple reduction of legal service provider costs. Corporate counsel can near-instantaneously analyze data to see what should be collected and preserved, enabling them to make strategic decisions sooner in the legal process, and swiftly adapt as new information is discovered.”

Perhaps as more organizations adopt in-house eDiscovery solutions, the legal discovery process will become more intelligent, less cumbersome, and less costly. And who knows, one day it may start to resemble the legal dramas we watch on TV. 

For more in-depth information, download the complete whitepaper from Enterprise Strategy Group.

The inherently litigious environment of the health care industry, exponentially-increasing amounts of data, compounded with strict compliance requirements, are forcing hospitals and health care providers to get a better handle on their electronic information. This is not without its challenges, according to a recent article in FierceEMR, “EHR implementations open ‘cans of compliance worms,’” which discusses decisions and issues that need to be addressed when adopting EHR technology.

In the article, Cheryl Rice, VP and chief corporate responsibility officer for Cincinnati-based Catholic Health care Partners notes that one of the ‘four pressing issues’ hospitals face while converting to EHRs is audits and litigation defense. This speaks to the growing amount of discoverable information held in EHR systems, which means it is important that as health care providers increase their use of EHR systems, they also implement an information management and proactive eDiscovery solution, to help ensure compliance, and reduce litigation.

StoredIQ’s Intelligent Information Management Platform has helped many companies – including a leading health care provider – address enterprise-level information management. With our auditable solution, companies can automate their records retention and disposition strategy to comply with corporate information governance guidelines (IP, HR, trade secrets, etc.), as well as regulatory compliance mandates (PII, PCI, HIPAA, etc.) – reducing overall risk and cost. StoredIQ provides health care organizations with a range of business-critical benefits, including the ability to:

• Comply with corporate policy and government regulations
• Reduce risk, preempt litigation and avoid fines
• Protect sensitive, business-critical information
• Automate management of storage and retention policies
• Optimize storage and delete unnecessary information

As the health care industry moves toward greater use of electronic medical records, hospitals, clinics, pharmacies – any organization that is managing patient information – should have a solution that helps meet escalating compliance requirements, mitigate risk and minimize cost.

For more information on StoredIQ’s Intelligent Information Management Solution email info@storediq.com.