3rd Annual: Top 10 Things to be Thankful for in Information Governance

In honor of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, we – at StoredIQ – have put together the 3rd annual list of the Top 10 Things To Be Thankful for in Information Governance.

1. I’m thankful that my Information Governance technology can orchestrate all my ESI better than a professional chef can orchestrate a gourmet Thanksgiving feast.
2. I’m thankful that the eDiscovery for this court case didn’t cost me an arm and a (turkey) leg.
3. I’m thankful that my eDiscovery solution helps me settle legal arguments quicker than I can settle family disputes at the dinner table.
4. I’m thankful for “fat pants” after eating a Thanksgiving dinner that makes Big Data look small.
5. I’m thankful that it’s easier to organize my electronic information than it is to organize who’s bringing which dish to Thanksgiving dinner.
6. I’m thankful that mapping my data is easier than teaching Great Aunt Thelma to use a Garmin to map her way to my house for Thanksgiving dinner.
7. I’m thankful that unlike football, my eDiscovery solution makes holding legal.
8. I’m thankful that I have an Information Governance solution sophisticated enough to let me find all my data—just like finding one person in the midst of the Macy’s Day Parade.
9. I’m thankful that I know the difference between spoliation of evidence, and spoiled leftovers.
10. I’m thankful that finding my ESI isn’t as hard as finding cranberry sauce at the grocery store on Thanksgiving morning.

Happy Thanksgiving from StoredIQ!

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.

Not Just for eDiscovery…StoredIQ Introduces New Records Management Application

We know from our many corporate legal customers that they are increasingly focusing on 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.

Records Management, unfortunately too often sometimes seen as an expensive and necessary evil, is actually a solid starting point to realize bottom line financial gains, and minimize legal risk. According to a 2009 study by IDC, 60 to 80 percent of the information retained by corporations in America has no value from a business or legal perspective.

Content and records management systems can provide very powerful control over information, but they offer little value if content never makes it into the system. This is the Achilles heel of records management – requiring users to go through a manual filing process that they perceive as having little value to them. As a result, work-in-progress files and other content languish in unmanaged environments such as shared drives and desktops – out of sight and out of control. Realizing the increased legal and regulatory risk this presents.

Leveraging the deep data insight and control that we’ve brought to the legal department, StoredIQ’s new records management application, RecordsIQ, gives records managers the necessary data intelligence to identify, manage and clean-up corporate records. However, And unlike other solutions in the marketplace, RecordsIQ provides in-place analysis and classification of data without requiring knowledge worker involvement. By empowering the records management team to defensibly delete data, corporations can significantly reduce legal and compliance risks, and yield tangible ROI in the IT storage budget.

RecordsIQ is designed to address a wide range of records retention, disposition and management requirements.  By integrating an easy to use records management application with the power of the StoredIQ platform, records managers have a single solution to make informed decisions about the business value of their enterprise data, while increasing operational efficiencies and reducing risk and cost.

Key features of RecordsIQ include:

• Data topology map provides a clear understanding of data across the enterprise to facilitate appropriate data retention and disposition decisions
• Records management workflow streamlines the management of records policies across the enterprise
• Identification and classification of records according to business-value and pre-defined requirements
• Automatic execution of electronic records policies by taking action on data including copy, move, or delete based on records policies
• Defensible deletion of records with no business value by automatically destroying documents in compliance with corporate disposition policies

RecordsIQ is available now, to learn more:

• Download the RecordsIQ data sheet
• View the RecordsIQ video overview
• Email info@storediq.com