Corporate Awareness Litigation

F RENSICS
CORPORATION TM

Litigation Awareness

www.forensicscorp.com
info@forensicscorp.com
877.248.DATA
480.747.1732

What If….
Your company got filed with a Lawsuit comprising of
Litigation Hold.

• Is your IT and Operations Ready?
• Are your employees ready?
• Is your Legal dept ready?
• Do you have Litigation Hold processes in place? Response
team ready to go?
• Do you have policies, procedures to deal with this?
• Are your systems configured to minimize cost of e-
Discovery?

Do you know the implications if you don’t have above
processes & procedures in place?


Agenda

1 Challenges with Litigation

2 Implications

3 Solutions to Litigation Preparedness


Challenges with Litigation



Immediate Off Switch

Immediate stop
of the deletion of
email and other
electronic documents


Widespread Organizational Impact
• Employees • Operations

CEO
End user
CFO
Application
admin Records Mgr
Compliance
Officer

Storage admin
Legal counsel Systems admin
CIO

• Legal • Technology


Employees

• There are thousands of emails sent with enormous
amount of information. Some of this email may be
inappropriate.
• Information gets copied from work computers to
personal computers.
• Outsiders (family members) often use employee’s work
computers.
• Majority of employees do not know or care about
security or legal implications.
• Corporate info gets sent to third parties outside the
company.
• Use company resources in ways they shouldn’t.

Legal

• Lawyers are not technically grounded.
• Traditional attorneys do not emphasize front-end
“process” issues that would help simplify or focus
search problem in particular contexts.
• The reality is that huge sources of heterogeneous ESI
exist, presenting an array of technical issues.
• Deadlines and resource constraints.
• Failure to employ best strategic practices.


Technology & IT

• IT does not understand implications of litigation, scope and
implications.
• Most IT staff do not know or understand Legal hold processes nor
do they know what to do.
• Security, HR and other corporate personnel do not understand
implications or do not have appropriate skills. Roles and
responsibilities are not clearly defined as they relate to litigations,
e-discoveries.
• Solutions aimed at external threats, not internal audits.
• Solutions based on old ideas of “perimeter” threats.
• Unable to provide real time detection and remediation.
• Information protection is increasingly complex and costly.
• Mailboxes are capped at 200 MB, but PSTs (or local archives) are
everywhere.


Operations

• Keeping the company
running while responding
to litigation and e-
Discovery requests.
• Many systems to look at.
• No formal litigation
readiness process.

High costs of e-Discovery, Litigation and
poor preparation often leads to
settlement.


Implications


Implications
Litigation Readiness Process
First Issue Discovery Court
internal internal requested order
awareness retention hold by one issued
party

Deliver Result Search, Query
Discovery
response review
request
To the
court Archive User
DB directory
Discovery depends on
effective archiving

Implications
Traditional Sources of Data


Implications
New Sources of Data

• IM
• VOIP
• MP3 Storage Devices
(iPods)
• Memory sticks and flash
drives
• Global positioning
systems
• Blogs


Implications
Types of Data – Consider where this information resides
in a geographically dispersed organization.

• Billing records • Emails
• Official correspondence • Purchase orders
• Contracts • Accounts payable & receivables
• Internal policies • Audio / video recordings
• Personnel records • Images
• Any signed forms • Drawings
• Audit / financial reports • Backup drives
• Research studies • Rough drafts
• Testing records • Personal notes


Implications
Over 1 BILLION emails are generated by small company
each year. That does NOT include all the documents and
other artifacts created.

25,000 Users
* 100 Daily emails
2,500,000
* 365
912,500,000 Yearly emails
* 5

4,285,199,774 web pages 4,562,500,000 emails


Implications

• Risk of Legal Holds
• Cost of E-Discovery
• Discovery Part of a Bigger Picture


Solutions to Litigation


Why Litigation Readiness?

• Regulatory and Compliance drivers.
• Litigation issues.
• Data protection problems.
• General information management “Best Practice.”


Organizations must:

• Assess Litigation and e-Discovery readiness.
• Establish Litigation Response Team.
• Formulate e-Discovery Response Plan.
• Create Data Classification.
• Develop Enterprise Vault.
• Roll out Training & awareness plan.
• Maintain Records Management.


Litigation and e-Discovery readiness assessment

• Review and assess policies, procedures, governance
currently in place.
• Review and assess organizational alignment of Legal, IT,
Operations and ability to respond to Litigations.
• Review and assess enterprise architecture.
• Review and assess records retention policy.


Establish Litigation Response Team

• Create Litigation Response Team that is a Liaison
between
• Legal – internal and external
• Internal IT
• Operations
• Users
• Business Units
• Records manager


E-Discovery Response Plan

1. Prevent Spoliation
2. Formulate Discovery Plan
3. Limit Scope of Discovery Request
4. Seek Cost Shifting
5. Collect Documents
6. Process Documents
7. Review Documents
8. Produce Documents


Data Classification

• Determine the organization’s information asset classification
maturity level.
• Determine short term and long term goals to demonstrate
constant improvement.
• Classify & categorize data
Classification Maturity
• Relate business rules to 0 - No information assets are classified or
data classes. assets are randomly classified.
1- Assets are classified at a high level or
• Determine service levels organizational level, assets are unidentified.
• Review sources of data & 2- Processes are developed and implemented
allowing assets to be classified in detail.
access control. 3- New assets are classified in detail.
• Develop documentation 4 – Legacy assets are classified in detail.
methodology and 5 - Assets are classified, and processes exist
mechanism(s). that allow for asset reassessment and new
asset classification.


Enterprise Vault
Intelligent Intelligent Intelligent
Classification Retention Discovery

• Automated, content-
based classification
engine • Filter from archive to • Tag for discovery to
remove junk / speed search
• Optional popup for unwanted material processes
user-driven
classification • Set retention to • Flag for review to
ensure appropriate ensure appropriate
• RM connectors for lifecycle supervisory cycle
EMC, OpenText, IBM,
Oracle


Develop training and awareness plan

• Part of orientation process.
• Annual audit by all employees that keep records.
• Ongoing training of policies and awareness.
• Make confidential/sensitive data handlers aware of
privacy and security requirements.
• Require acknowledgment by data users of their
responsibility for safeguarding such data.
• Enhance general privacy and security awareness
programs to specifically address safeguarding
confidential/sensitive data.


Records Management

• It is more than a timetable for destroying records.
• It is more than a single “records custodian” signing an
affidavit.
• Records management enforces the policies and rules
for the retention and disposition of content required
for documenting business transactions.
• A “records retention” policy should be a “records
management” policy.


Remember that…

• Courts are not afraid and, in fact, increasingly prone, to
hold companies accountable for deficient discovery
practices.
• Courts consider electronic data a part of mainstream
discovery & are unwilling to tolerate destruction of
relevant information.
• Counsel, organizations & individuals must take
affirmative steps to prevent intentional and negligent
spoliation.
• Spoliation as a result of document mismanagement is
now seldom, if ever, excused.


Forensics Corporation
Partnering Together To:

• Review, assess and update policies and processes.
• Establish a Litigation Response Team.
• Leverage technology to enforce policy.
• Automate collection, retention, legal hold and
expiration.
• Enable efficient e-Discovery with rapid production
through data classification, enterprise vault & records
management.
• Tie into internal and external litigation case
management.
• Provide training and good communication policies for
employees.

Contact Us
Email: info@forensicscorp.com

Tel.: +1.480.747.1732 or
Tel.: 1.877.248.DATA (3282)

Or for more information visit us at:


Corporate Awareness Litigation

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