When the Cloud Goes Bankrupt...

Well maybe this isn’t totally related to Cloud computing but I had to get the latest IT catch phrase in there somewhere right? Law.com posted an article yesterday that raises the question of what to do when your hosted e-discovery vendor has financial problems and either puts their company on the market to be sold or files for bankruptcy.

If you use a hosted e-discovery vendor this could be a huge issue. If you have a pending e-discovery request and your hosted e-discovery vendor either delays producing the data, refuses to, or can’t produce the data at all then your company may be liable. The article states that relying on a hosted e-discovery vendor that becomes insolvent presents some of the following risks:

· Lost data
· Missed deadlines
· Starting over with a new vendor
· No support

The article also states that there are some things you can do to help mitigate the risks. Be careful when creating contracts with a hosted vendor. Make sure that the contract protects you in the case that the company becomes insolvent. The contract should contain provisions that allow you to access your data immediately in case the company is sold, goes into bankruptcy, or the contract is terminated.

You can also negotiate regular dumps of your ESI to a local repository stored in-house to help mitigate the risk. I happen to believe that this is the safest method to protect from risk and I think that an Archive is the easiest way to do this. Email data can be journaled to two locations so why not journal to a local archive as well as your hosted e-discovery vendor. Keeping a copy of this data locally protects you from losing your data or missing court deadlines if that e-discovery vendor ceases to exist. If the worst happens the local copy of the data can be turned over to a new e-discovery vendor or can be searched by the in-house discovery or legal team to produce the data.

The article mentioned can be found here: http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1202429299940

Technorati Tags:
E-discovery, Email Archiving, Compliance, Hosting, Hosted Discovery

Can you find what you're looking for?

Most Archiving solutions do a great job of storing information in an efficient manner for a long period of time. They vary in the ways they collect, store, and single instance the data. Some select an archiving solution for the way they collect the data and store it. Some may select an archiving solution for the user interface or how easy it is to use and deploy. An area often overlooked is technology behind the search that is used to find data within the archive.

Finding what you need in a timely matter within the archive is vital when that data is requested by the courts or other entities. When purchasing an archiving solution most will use the search engine that is included within the product without even thinking about using another solution. Enterprise search solutions have advanced technology used to analyze language, meaning, and concepts in your data and use that to produce more relevant results and provide a better rank for the results.

Most would think that the best place to search for a good enterprise search solution is to go the search leaders. Start with Google and Yahoo then maybe Microsoft. Although these players all offer excellent Internet search engines they do not offer the same level of advanced search required for enterprise search needs.

A recent Article posted on the ITPRO website in the UK talks about the the differences between Internet search and enterprise search. For example the relevancy rating in Google considers how many other pages link to a particular page. This does not apply in searching for enterprise data stored on file servers, SharePoint sites, and in email archives. Relevancy should be based on the meaning of the content of the data along with the metadata stored with that document.

Each solution described in the article uses a different technology to determine the meaning of the content within the data and how it bases the result relevancy on that data. For example Recommind uses statistical models built from the semantic analysis of existing data to produce relevant results and Autonomy uses Bayesian statistical models that use inferences from past searches to influence the relevancy of future results.

The article is a very interesting read if you are looking into search technology for your enterprise or to support your existing archive solution.

Here is the link: http://www.itpro.co.uk/608925/why-enterprise-search-is-not-internet-search

Technorati Tags:
Enterprise Search, eMail Archiving, Compliance, eDiscovery

No attacks on Microsoft Planned...

I am not sure which is most concerning. The fact that a corporation can buy a fighter jet or the fact that Larry Ellison already owns one.

Don't worry Microsoft, it's only a light attack jet. :)

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/a-new-fighter-jet-for-googles-founders/

Archive or Backup?

Recent research by CMS Watch shows that some IT managers still do not understand the differences between e-mail archiving and backup.

Backup is for the short term risk associated with a potential disaster that could prevent users from accessing their data. Backups should be easily available and provide a quick restore to a previous state before the disaster occurred.

An archive is used for the long term efficient storage of data. This includes features such as single instancing (de-duplication). Storing data long term in an archive preserves it and ensures that it is not tampered with. Ensuring the integrity of the data is vital in a legal discovery request. Archives also allow for the quick search and access to that data without restore to an email server.

Article link: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-cms/cant-tell-an-email-archive-from-a-backup-solution-003350.php

Technorati Tags:
Email Archiving, Compliance, eDiscovery, Exchange Server

Searching data is a burden for Google.

I read an article from eWeek today that I found interesting. Apparently Google was recently served with a subpoena for documents related to a court case it was involved in as an investor. They argued that it would be an unreasonable burden for them to search their own files.

I am not sure whether or not the judge believed them but it seems that a company that corners the market on search technology should not be able to get away with that argument. Although, Google isn't really considered a legal discovery search tool.

A legal discovery search tool provides something extra with their search technology. In the article they call it "concept search". This is the idea of doing an analysis of how the search terms are used in the data that is returned. Knowing the meaning of words and the way they are used in the data set allows for the inclusion of false negatives and the elimination of false positives from the results that are returned. A more accurate search means less review time before presentation saving companies money and lessening their burden to produce data.

I believe that as legal search technology improves the argument of unreasonable burden will be less successful.

Article Link: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Google-Cant-Search-Their-Own-Documents/

Technorati Tags:
eDiscovery, Concept Search, Google, Archiving, Compliance

George needs an archive!

I thought that the following article from the AP last week was an interesting insight to the fact that even our government still does not understand the importance of Archiving:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WHITE_HOUSE_E_MAIL?SITE=AZMES&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

The White House is missing 225 days of email. They are accepting bids for a recovery process that will include 35,000 disaster recovery tapes. 35,000!!! As a former Exchange administrator and as some of you are as well we can all understand the time it takes to restore 10 tapes let alone 35,000. I am sure that the bids for this project will be quite large as the labor involved will be high.

This should be a lesson to all those out there still using backup tapes for recovery or for your archiving solution. If an archiving solution was in place at the White House there would be no need to restore backup tapes in an effort to find emails that are being requested. The information could be easily searched for from the archive and exported in a readable format or even recovered as individual messages.

I think that the tape backup era is coming to a close. With so many different solutions on the market that now offer better performance than tape I can’t imagine anyone sticking with tape as a medium to store data for disaster recovery. Take Microsoft’s DPM for example. Although they have the option to store data on tape they also have the option to store online snapshots of the Exchange email system for quick disk-based recovery in the event of a disaster. There are also a number of other storage vendors on the market using a snapshot technology to backup Exchange and other email systems. As the cost of storage decreases the popularity of these disk-based backup systems is increasing.

Using a disk-based backup system in combination with an Archive would mean that organizations no longer need to rely on tape backup for their email systems. The disk-based backup can be used for near term recovery (under 1 year) and the archive for longer term recovery. Information over 1 year old is typically only requested for discovery purposes. Most users would not make requests for restore of their email if they have not accessed it in a year.

It will be interesting (and painful) to see how much this process might cost our government. As you and I both know it is not the government that will be paying. It will be us with our tax dollars.

George – Please buy an archiving system!

Technorati Tags:
Email Archiving, eDiscovery, White House Missing Email, Tape Backup, Microsoft DPM, Snapshots, Disk-based Backup

Bigfoot exists, the world is flat, and executives are still concerned about eDiscovery!

One out of three of these are confirmed. You decide which…

An article from the National Law journal states that 2 out of 5 executives are still bothered by electronic discovery. The article references a survey by Deloitte Financial Advisory Services of more than 520 executives from banking, securities, financial services, and technology industries. Here are some interesting data points from the survey:

• 17.5% of respondents said they were not ready to handle eDiscovery requests


• 11.8% reported no specific policies for data retention or destruction


• 47.5% worried about the cost of discovering data in their organization


• 16.3% feared court sanctions from failure to respond to discovery requests


• 12.9% worried about meeting court deadlines

This survey tells me that executives either through fear of the unknown or lack of budget are still not adequately prepared for an eDiscovery request. Being proactive about eDiscovery by installing an archiving system, mapping the data in your environment, and testing the plan you have in place will greatly reduce the anxiety these executives are feeling.

If they are not worried about eDiscovery then they must certainly be worried about Bigfoot. This week Fox News reported that a couple of guys from Georgia found the body of a Bigfoot. I used to never worry about a Bigfoot coming out from the woods and assaulting me but now I am not so sure. You will have to look for yourself and decide (there are pictures here). I myself can’t wait for the press conference this morning.

I also used to never worry about falling off the face of the earth while circumnavigating the globe but apparently that is still called into question as well. I came across a website this week for a group (they call themselves the Flat Earth Society) that believes the earth is flat. They even have theories about why the earth is flat, why most don’t know it and have been lied to, and how travel can happen with a flat earth. It is interesting to look at if you have some extra time on your hands.

I am off to the store now to stock up on supplies to protect myself from the Bigfoot. I know that garlic is used for vampires but what keeps a sasquatch away? :)

Technorati Tags:
eDiscovery, Archiving, Email Archiving, Bigfoot, Flat Earth Society