Just hours before going to press with this issue of KMWorld, AIIM released the results of a study that are too important to wait another month to share. So, we wanted to highlight at least the key findings of “Content Analytics, Research Tools For Unstructured Content and Rich Media.”
Content analytics is not just another one of those IT marketing terms. Rather, it concentrates on “a range of search and reporting technologies that can provide similar levels of business intelligence and strategic value across unstructured data to that conventionally associated with structured data reporting.”
So acknowledging our limited space and time, here are the key findings:
• For 72 percent of respondents, it’s harder to find information owned by their organization than information not owned by them—i.e., on the Web.
• Of the 47 percent who find they frequently need to use advanced search options, more than half would like something more effective.
• 70 percent would find advanced analytic functions “extremely useful” or “very useful.”
• For most content types, the respondent’s ability to “research” is three to six times less than their ability to “search,” particularly for rich media files, but also office documents and e-mails.
• E-discovery, digital asset management (DAM), Web analytics and de-duplication are the better known technologies compared to sentiment analysis, copyright detection and digital forensics.
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Source: kmworld.com
By: Hugh McKellar
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Cloud computing raises risk of patent litigation, attorney says
Unresolved legal questions surround cloud services
Out of all the security concerns related to cloud computing, here's one you might not have considered: Customers using cloud services may put themselves at risk of patent litigation.
It may be a small risk, but it is another issue to consider when assessing the pros and cons of cloud computing, says Nolan Goldberg, a patent and trade secret litigation attorney for Proskauer Rose LLP in New York.
FAQ: Cloud computing, demystified
"I think IP [intellectual property] is going to be a huge barrier to cloud adoption," Goldberg said. "Using a cloud service creates a different risk profile than using a non-cloud version of the same service."
The court system is clogged with frivolous patent lawsuits, and customers who use a service that allegedly infringes on a patent could be sued through no fault of their own, said Goldberg, a speaker at the Interop Las Vegas trade show. Plaintiffs often go after customers in cases where a physical product may violate a patent, and the same litigation method could be used in the world of cloud computing, he said.
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Source: networkworld.com
By: Jon Brodkin
Out of all the security concerns related to cloud computing, here's one you might not have considered: Customers using cloud services may put themselves at risk of patent litigation.
It may be a small risk, but it is another issue to consider when assessing the pros and cons of cloud computing, says Nolan Goldberg, a patent and trade secret litigation attorney for Proskauer Rose LLP in New York.
FAQ: Cloud computing, demystified
"I think IP [intellectual property] is going to be a huge barrier to cloud adoption," Goldberg said. "Using a cloud service creates a different risk profile than using a non-cloud version of the same service."
The court system is clogged with frivolous patent lawsuits, and customers who use a service that allegedly infringes on a patent could be sued through no fault of their own, said Goldberg, a speaker at the Interop Las Vegas trade show. Plaintiffs often go after customers in cases where a physical product may violate a patent, and the same litigation method could be used in the world of cloud computing, he said.
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Source: networkworld.com
By: Jon Brodkin
Getting Ediscovery to Work for You
Locating, securing and producing all the electronically stored information required in the discovery phase of civil litigation can be very time consuming and extremely expensive. However, failure to produce the required information in a timely fashion can lead to fines running into millions of dollars, thanks to revisions to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that came into effect in December 2006.
Many companies still deal with e-discovery obligations by outsourcing the process to external specialists, who may charge between $250 and $1,400 per gigabyte to sift through corporate data, collect what is relevant, and get it in to a form that can be submitted to lawyers for review. In the past five years, an increasing number of companies have begun treating e-discovery as a routine business process that can be performed in-house. Many of these companies use e-discovery software to help carry out this business process more efficiently.
E-discovery software is designed to enable the efficient undertaking of various stages of the e-discovery process defined in the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRF), which establishes guidelines for e-discovery. These stages include the identification, preservation, collection, processing, review and analysis of corporate information. Research house Gartner said e-discovery solutions may cost more than $500,000, but in some organizations they can pay for themselves in as little as three months or after a single big law case. That's because the cost of software can be offset against fees that would otherwise be paid to outside service providers to process data for discovery and against the reduction in legal fees charged by outside attorneys reviewing large amounts of written electronic material. Little wonder the market for e-discovery software is expected to grow more than 20 percent per year for the next three years, according to Gartner estimates.
Of course, not every company needs e-discovery software. Those that do tend to have one of two key characteristics: They have significant intellectual property assets that must be protected (as is the case for companies involved in sectors like oil and gas, banking, pharmaceuticals and high technology) or they are involved in lawsuit-driven industries, such as insurance.
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Source: serverwatch.com
By: Paul Rubens
Many companies still deal with e-discovery obligations by outsourcing the process to external specialists, who may charge between $250 and $1,400 per gigabyte to sift through corporate data, collect what is relevant, and get it in to a form that can be submitted to lawyers for review. In the past five years, an increasing number of companies have begun treating e-discovery as a routine business process that can be performed in-house. Many of these companies use e-discovery software to help carry out this business process more efficiently.
E-discovery software is designed to enable the efficient undertaking of various stages of the e-discovery process defined in the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRF), which establishes guidelines for e-discovery. These stages include the identification, preservation, collection, processing, review and analysis of corporate information. Research house Gartner said e-discovery solutions may cost more than $500,000, but in some organizations they can pay for themselves in as little as three months or after a single big law case. That's because the cost of software can be offset against fees that would otherwise be paid to outside service providers to process data for discovery and against the reduction in legal fees charged by outside attorneys reviewing large amounts of written electronic material. Little wonder the market for e-discovery software is expected to grow more than 20 percent per year for the next three years, according to Gartner estimates.
Of course, not every company needs e-discovery software. Those that do tend to have one of two key characteristics: They have significant intellectual property assets that must be protected (as is the case for companies involved in sectors like oil and gas, banking, pharmaceuticals and high technology) or they are involved in lawsuit-driven industries, such as insurance.
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Source: serverwatch.com
By: Paul Rubens
Firms Look To 'In-Sourcing' To Slash Costs
In an effort to cut expenses, WilmerHale has decided to "in-source" its business operations to Dayton, Ohio. But other law firms could also benefit from relocating support staff and even attorneys to less costly locales beyond the urban hubs, experts said.
The new facilities, which are slotted to open in September, will house the majority of the firm's finance, human resources, information technology, document review and practice management operations, which are currently spread out between its Boston, New York and Washington offices, the firm said Monday.
Those metropolitan areas come with higher price tags for rent, taxes and employee salaries. Given the economic beating the industry has taken in recent years, and the availability of sophisticated technology, it may finally be time for law firms to move their business operations — and even some legal work — to low-cost locales throughout the U.S.
“Some of the very large firms will undoubtedly do that, obviously because of the recession and because of the desire to contain costs,” said Joel A. Rose, president of Joel A. Rose & Associates, a management consultant to law offices.
“With electronic technology, you can be almost any place and you can obtain information and communicate information, so it's not necessary for the backroom operations to be literally in the backroom of a very expensive office facility,” he said.
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Source: Law 360
By: Leigh Kamping-Carder
The new facilities, which are slotted to open in September, will house the majority of the firm's finance, human resources, information technology, document review and practice management operations, which are currently spread out between its Boston, New York and Washington offices, the firm said Monday.
Those metropolitan areas come with higher price tags for rent, taxes and employee salaries. Given the economic beating the industry has taken in recent years, and the availability of sophisticated technology, it may finally be time for law firms to move their business operations — and even some legal work — to low-cost locales throughout the U.S.
“Some of the very large firms will undoubtedly do that, obviously because of the recession and because of the desire to contain costs,” said Joel A. Rose, president of Joel A. Rose & Associates, a management consultant to law offices.
“With electronic technology, you can be almost any place and you can obtain information and communicate information, so it's not necessary for the backroom operations to be literally in the backroom of a very expensive office facility,” he said.
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Source: Law 360
By: Leigh Kamping-Carder
New York State Court Issues Report Calling for Extreme E-Discovery Makeover
The New York state court looked in the mirror recently and they didn’t like what they saw. While it’s hard to imagine the self-dubbed “center of the universe” finding flaws with anything… apparently e-discovery has caused the big apple to take serious stock of the situation. In a report entitled ELECTRONIC DISCOVERY in the NEW YORK STATE COURTS, Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman and Chief Administrative Judge Ann Pfau do an excellent job laying out the nature of the problem in a 24 page report. Their initial findings in many ways mirror those of the American College of Trial Lawyers Task Force on Discovery (”Task Force”) and their survey of the Fellows of the American College of Trial Lawyers (”ACTL”).
“Electronic discovery (“e-discovery”) has for some time been changing the face of modern litigation. It is a major, if not the predominant, factor behind rising litigation costs and delays and presents serious challenges to the court system’s ability to resolve disputes ranging from commercial matters to personal injury cases, in an efficient, cost-effective manner.”
Fortunately, the Report recognizes the ubiquity of the vexing e-discovery challenges.
“[T]he volume of electronically stored information (“ESI”) has increased exponentially over the last decade, along with the amount of ESI potentially relevant to legal disputes. But while it is inexpensive to store immense quantities of ESI, it can be extremely expensive in the context of litigation to identify, preserve, and collect potentially relevant ESI and to have it reviewed for responsiveness and privilege by attorneys and paralegals prior to production to another party.”
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Source: eDiscovery 2.0
By: Dean Gonsowski
“Electronic discovery (“e-discovery”) has for some time been changing the face of modern litigation. It is a major, if not the predominant, factor behind rising litigation costs and delays and presents serious challenges to the court system’s ability to resolve disputes ranging from commercial matters to personal injury cases, in an efficient, cost-effective manner.”
Fortunately, the Report recognizes the ubiquity of the vexing e-discovery challenges.
“[T]he volume of electronically stored information (“ESI”) has increased exponentially over the last decade, along with the amount of ESI potentially relevant to legal disputes. But while it is inexpensive to store immense quantities of ESI, it can be extremely expensive in the context of litigation to identify, preserve, and collect potentially relevant ESI and to have it reviewed for responsiveness and privilege by attorneys and paralegals prior to production to another party.”
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Source: eDiscovery 2.0
By: Dean Gonsowski
Why you should know the difference between search tools and discovery tools
Search, information discovery and e-discovery seek and display information in different ways
Government information technology workers might have heard the following three phrases used interchangeably: search tools, information discovery tools and e-discovery tools.
Depending on your definition, there is some overlap among the concepts. But there also are significant differences. Thus it’s important to understand the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle differences among the terms, especially as government agencies are entering more information into sprawling storage and data archiving systems.
All three terms relate to seeking information across multiple data archives. But the three concepts are differentiated by the way searches are conducted and the presentation of results.
Search tools. This term often is used in a generic way to refer to multiple types of internal or external search engines, directories and information archives. Most search tools are usually designed to interact with a computer program — often a crawler, spider, indexing bot or similar system — that was created to retrieve documents or data. The crawler and its associated search tools can be set up to interact with one specific database, a set of databases, a single computer network or even the full Internet. When using such tools, searches often are based on a keyword, set of keywords, or a phrase that can be contained in one of the files that was indexed by the spider.
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Source: gcn.com
By: Shawn McCarthy
Government information technology workers might have heard the following three phrases used interchangeably: search tools, information discovery tools and e-discovery tools.
Depending on your definition, there is some overlap among the concepts. But there also are significant differences. Thus it’s important to understand the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle differences among the terms, especially as government agencies are entering more information into sprawling storage and data archiving systems.
All three terms relate to seeking information across multiple data archives. But the three concepts are differentiated by the way searches are conducted and the presentation of results.
Search tools. This term often is used in a generic way to refer to multiple types of internal or external search engines, directories and information archives. Most search tools are usually designed to interact with a computer program — often a crawler, spider, indexing bot or similar system — that was created to retrieve documents or data. The crawler and its associated search tools can be set up to interact with one specific database, a set of databases, a single computer network or even the full Internet. When using such tools, searches often are based on a keyword, set of keywords, or a phrase that can be contained in one of the files that was indexed by the spider.
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Source: gcn.com
By: Shawn McCarthy
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Silly bankers: Goldman Sachs shows email is always the smoking gun
I suppose one fine day we'll look back at the old days when all these people who got themselves into hot water by sending corporate emails that provided investigators, regulators, the media and others with a white-hot smoking gun of evidence. It's just a shame that that day is unlikely to occur within my three-score-and-ten years on the planet.
So here we go again with Goldman Sachs' Fabrice 'Fabulous Fab' Tourre conducting a romantic affair over the corporate system while referring blithely to "the entire system [being] about to crumble at any moment" and trades he created as a sort of "intellectual masturbation" made "without necessarily understanding all the implications of these monstrosities". Other internal Goldman messages referring to "crap pools" and "shitty" deals.
Do they never learn? In the wake of the dotcom bust it was discovered that financial analysts placing 'buy' recommendations on stocks were privately slating those same companies. Love trysts are commonly laid bare through an audit trail in black and white bits and bytes that humiliates both the people involved and their employers. Meanwhile, content management and e-discovery software firms rub their hands and laugh all the way to the bank as they are called in to identify yet more evidence of possible wrongdoing.
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Source: CIO UK
By: Martin Veitch
So here we go again with Goldman Sachs' Fabrice 'Fabulous Fab' Tourre conducting a romantic affair over the corporate system while referring blithely to "the entire system [being] about to crumble at any moment" and trades he created as a sort of "intellectual masturbation" made "without necessarily understanding all the implications of these monstrosities". Other internal Goldman messages referring to "crap pools" and "shitty" deals.
Do they never learn? In the wake of the dotcom bust it was discovered that financial analysts placing 'buy' recommendations on stocks were privately slating those same companies. Love trysts are commonly laid bare through an audit trail in black and white bits and bytes that humiliates both the people involved and their employers. Meanwhile, content management and e-discovery software firms rub their hands and laugh all the way to the bank as they are called in to identify yet more evidence of possible wrongdoing.
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Source: CIO UK
By: Martin Veitch
The Last Words on E-Discovery?
Two recent e-discovery decisions, the Jan. 15 decision by U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York Shira A. Scheindlin in Pension Committee of the University of Montreal Pension Plan v. Bank of America Securities and the Feb. 19 decision by U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Texas Lee H. Rosenthal Rimkus Consulting Group Inc. v. Cammarata, focused on the issue of how to gauge the relevance of e-discovery lost by the producing party at the prejudice of that loss to the requesting party when the e-discovery is, by definition, lost and so unknown.
I reviewed the facts in both matters and Pension Committee's approach of creating presumptions of relevance and prejudice when the data is lost due to the gross negligence or willfulness of the producing party. This article will analyze Rimkus' approach, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of both, and place them in the context of unfolding e-discovery jurisprudence.
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
In contrast with Pension Committee, Rimkus takes a more conservative approach both in analyzing degrees of culpability and valuing the loss of data a party has failed to preserve. In issuing the opinion in Rimkus, Rosenthal looked at Pension Committee carefully and noted two differences between her matter and Scheindlin's matter.
First, while the "focus of Pension Committee was on when negligent failures to preserve, collect, and produce documents -- including electronically stored information -- in discovery may justify the severe sanction of a form of adverse inference instruction," Rimkus did not "involve allegations of negligence in electronic discovery" but, instead, involved "allegations of intentional destruction of electronically stored evidence." The second was that, unlike in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 9th Circuits, but like in the 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th, and D.C. Circuits, "mere negligence" leading to the destruction of discovery would be insufficient in the 5th Circuit to warrant "severe sanctions," such as "granting default judgment, striking pleadings, or giving adverse inference instructions;" instead, the party seeking such sanctions would have to present "evidence of 'bad faith.'"
"The court in Pension Committee," Rosenthal carefully explained, "applied case law in the Second Circuit" which has been construed "to allow severe sanctions for negligent destruction of evidence." However, in the "Fifth Circuit and others, negligent as opposed to intentional, 'bad faith' destruction of evidence is not sufficient to give an adverse inference instruction and may not relieve the party seeking discovery of the need to show that missing documents are relevant and their loss prejudicial." Thus, the court reasoned, the "circuit differences in the level of culpability necessary for an adverse inference instruction limit the applicability of the Pension Committee approach."
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Source: Law.com
By: Leonard Deutchman
I reviewed the facts in both matters and Pension Committee's approach of creating presumptions of relevance and prejudice when the data is lost due to the gross negligence or willfulness of the producing party. This article will analyze Rimkus' approach, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of both, and place them in the context of unfolding e-discovery jurisprudence.
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
In contrast with Pension Committee, Rimkus takes a more conservative approach both in analyzing degrees of culpability and valuing the loss of data a party has failed to preserve. In issuing the opinion in Rimkus, Rosenthal looked at Pension Committee carefully and noted two differences between her matter and Scheindlin's matter.
First, while the "focus of Pension Committee was on when negligent failures to preserve, collect, and produce documents -- including electronically stored information -- in discovery may justify the severe sanction of a form of adverse inference instruction," Rimkus did not "involve allegations of negligence in electronic discovery" but, instead, involved "allegations of intentional destruction of electronically stored evidence." The second was that, unlike in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 9th Circuits, but like in the 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th, and D.C. Circuits, "mere negligence" leading to the destruction of discovery would be insufficient in the 5th Circuit to warrant "severe sanctions," such as "granting default judgment, striking pleadings, or giving adverse inference instructions;" instead, the party seeking such sanctions would have to present "evidence of 'bad faith.'"
"The court in Pension Committee," Rosenthal carefully explained, "applied case law in the Second Circuit" which has been construed "to allow severe sanctions for negligent destruction of evidence." However, in the "Fifth Circuit and others, negligent as opposed to intentional, 'bad faith' destruction of evidence is not sufficient to give an adverse inference instruction and may not relieve the party seeking discovery of the need to show that missing documents are relevant and their loss prejudicial." Thus, the court reasoned, the "circuit differences in the level of culpability necessary for an adverse inference instruction limit the applicability of the Pension Committee approach."
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Source: Law.com
By: Leonard Deutchman
Corporate e-mail in the cloud: Google vs. Microsoft
E-mail is the third rail of enterprise IT operations. You can mess up elsewhere, but bring down people's e-mail and you'll start getting irate calls literally in seconds.
Manesh Patel knows those risks well, but that didn't stop the senior vice president and CIO at Sanmina-SCI Corp. from stepping off the Microsoft Outlook/Exchange platform and moving the company's 16,000 users into Google's cloud -- thereby running the risk of interrupting users' e-mail, even if just temporarily, in the process. The cost savings were simply too good to pass up.
Two years ago, the San Jose-based contract manufacturer relied on stable, up-to-date versions of Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook and Exchange Server to handle its e-mail needs. Then, after a lengthy analysis and pilot, Sanmina-SCI shut down its 100 Exchange servers, traded Outlook for a browser as the primary e-mail client and migrated all of its e-mail users worldwide onto Google Apps for Business suite. This cloud-based service now delivers Google Inc.'s Gmail e-mail offering, plus calendaring and contact management services to Sanmina-SCI's workers.
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Source: Computerworld
By: Robert L. Mitchell
Manesh Patel knows those risks well, but that didn't stop the senior vice president and CIO at Sanmina-SCI Corp. from stepping off the Microsoft Outlook/Exchange platform and moving the company's 16,000 users into Google's cloud -- thereby running the risk of interrupting users' e-mail, even if just temporarily, in the process. The cost savings were simply too good to pass up.
Two years ago, the San Jose-based contract manufacturer relied on stable, up-to-date versions of Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook and Exchange Server to handle its e-mail needs. Then, after a lengthy analysis and pilot, Sanmina-SCI shut down its 100 Exchange servers, traded Outlook for a browser as the primary e-mail client and migrated all of its e-mail users worldwide onto Google Apps for Business suite. This cloud-based service now delivers Google Inc.'s Gmail e-mail offering, plus calendaring and contact management services to Sanmina-SCI's workers.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: Computerworld
By: Robert L. Mitchell
Hard drives on personal computers may contain more than you want others to know
Tim Driver is a big believer in technology.
“I can’t live without it and not many people can live without it because this is the age of communication,” he said.
He relies on computers for his engineering work. Imagine his surprise when he bought a used hard drive—and found someone else’s information on it.
“It’s enough to scare you, first of all. It’s an eye-opener,” he said.
Driver’s experience is more common than you may think.
Imagine buying a used computer and discovering a cache of illegal pornography.
Every year, the Harris County D.A.’s Office prosecutes dozens of child pornography cases. In some of those cases, previously-owned hard drives have helped prosecutors win convictions.
“If I go back as a forensic examiner and I look at the computer later, as long as that area of the hard drive hasn’t been written over with other information, I can still recover that particular file,” said Eric Devlin, Assistant Harris County District Attorney.
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Source: khou.com
By: Alex Sanz
“I can’t live without it and not many people can live without it because this is the age of communication,” he said.
He relies on computers for his engineering work. Imagine his surprise when he bought a used hard drive—and found someone else’s information on it.
“It’s enough to scare you, first of all. It’s an eye-opener,” he said.
Driver’s experience is more common than you may think.
Imagine buying a used computer and discovering a cache of illegal pornography.
Every year, the Harris County D.A.’s Office prosecutes dozens of child pornography cases. In some of those cases, previously-owned hard drives have helped prosecutors win convictions.
“If I go back as a forensic examiner and I look at the computer later, as long as that area of the hard drive hasn’t been written over with other information, I can still recover that particular file,” said Eric Devlin, Assistant Harris County District Attorney.
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Source: khou.com
By: Alex Sanz
Firm finds 5,400 deleted e-mail messages of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin
A computer forensics firm hired by Mayor Ray Nagin to locate the bulk of his e-mail messages from 2008 has turned up nearly 5,400 files that the administration said had been deleted, according to the firm's final report to the city.
The cache recovered by SunBlock Systems of Virginia, the firm Nagin hired to conduct the search, likely doesn't comprise all of the files created during a four-month period in 2008 via the mayor's Microsoft Outlook account. City officials have said Nagin sends and receives 80 to 100 e-mail messages daily.
But the volume of recovered files cited in the report represents nearly 10 times the number of e-mail and calendar files that the Nagin administration turned over to The Times-Picayune this month in response to a long-standing public-records request.
Read the firm's final report to the city
Those documents -- 533 e-mail and calendar files created in Microsoft Outlook, plus 53 printed pages of e-mail messages -- offer little insight into the inner workings of the Nagin administration or the mayor's activities beyond the daily grind of government.
Nagin's communications director on April 14 indicated that more files could be forthcoming. "This represents what SunBlock initially provided as a part of one of their search methods," Ceeon Quiett said via e-mail. "To date, they have not finalized their findings or disclosed their procedures. The contract is still active, and they are still in the process of their review."
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Source: nola.com
By: Michelee Krupa
The cache recovered by SunBlock Systems of Virginia, the firm Nagin hired to conduct the search, likely doesn't comprise all of the files created during a four-month period in 2008 via the mayor's Microsoft Outlook account. City officials have said Nagin sends and receives 80 to 100 e-mail messages daily.
But the volume of recovered files cited in the report represents nearly 10 times the number of e-mail and calendar files that the Nagin administration turned over to The Times-Picayune this month in response to a long-standing public-records request.
Read the firm's final report to the city
Those documents -- 533 e-mail and calendar files created in Microsoft Outlook, plus 53 printed pages of e-mail messages -- offer little insight into the inner workings of the Nagin administration or the mayor's activities beyond the daily grind of government.
Nagin's communications director on April 14 indicated that more files could be forthcoming. "This represents what SunBlock initially provided as a part of one of their search methods," Ceeon Quiett said via e-mail. "To date, they have not finalized their findings or disclosed their procedures. The contract is still active, and they are still in the process of their review."
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Source: nola.com
By: Michelee Krupa
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
AmLaw Critical Technology Trends Snapshot: Q1 2010
31% of law firms anticipate insourcing more eDiscovery work in the next 3 months.
The Cowen Group completed the Q1 Critical Trends Survey on April 12, 2010, collecting responses from 78 major law firms on their current workload, as well as near-term plans for technical and talent acquisitions.
We asked law firms
"What key tasks do you plan on insourcing in the next 3 months?"
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Source: cowengroup.com
By: David Cowen
The Cowen Group completed the Q1 Critical Trends Survey on April 12, 2010, collecting responses from 78 major law firms on their current workload, as well as near-term plans for technical and talent acquisitions.
We asked law firms
"What key tasks do you plan on insourcing in the next 3 months?"
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: cowengroup.com
By: David Cowen
IT’s Critical Partnership with Records Management
Businesses today function primarily with records in electronic form. The power of technology enables companies to become more competitive and to streamline business processes. Therefore, more and more of an organization’s records are electronic. Companies are more dependent than ever on the electronic records and information pulsing through their networks, wireless devices, data warehouses, transactional systems and unstructured data stores. These records and information facilitate decision-making, provide evidence of regulatory compliance, enable customer service and are the lifeblood of any organization’s ability to conduct its business.
It is just as true, but frequently overlooked, that these electronic records and information are subject to the same legal/regulatory/compliance requirements that impact records in other formats. It is a great temptation to manage electronic records and email according to their format (e.g., “How long do we have to keep this email?”) Treating electronic records in groups based on their format seems, at least on the surface, to be a simple and practical solution. But this approach overlooks the reality that any record or correspondence used in the course of conducting the organization’s business is subject to all the regulatory, legal and compliance requirements that impact the organization. It doesn’t matter whether the record information is included in an email, produced from a computer, or remains in digital format throughout its life, the compliance requirements apply.
This reality can most vividly be seen in charges and counter-charges made in corporate litigation. For example, Intel and AMD are currently litigating an anti-trust case in U.S. District Court in Delaware. Both companies filed motions with the court in March 2010, seeking sanctions against the other company, based on claims of improper records retention.
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Source: cioupdate.com
By: Diane Carlisle
It is just as true, but frequently overlooked, that these electronic records and information are subject to the same legal/regulatory/compliance requirements that impact records in other formats. It is a great temptation to manage electronic records and email according to their format (e.g., “How long do we have to keep this email?”) Treating electronic records in groups based on their format seems, at least on the surface, to be a simple and practical solution. But this approach overlooks the reality that any record or correspondence used in the course of conducting the organization’s business is subject to all the regulatory, legal and compliance requirements that impact the organization. It doesn’t matter whether the record information is included in an email, produced from a computer, or remains in digital format throughout its life, the compliance requirements apply.
This reality can most vividly be seen in charges and counter-charges made in corporate litigation. For example, Intel and AMD are currently litigating an anti-trust case in U.S. District Court in Delaware. Both companies filed motions with the court in March 2010, seeking sanctions against the other company, based on claims of improper records retention.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: cioupdate.com
By: Diane Carlisle
Pressure Points for Achieving E-Discovery Cost Effectiveness
The technology for identifying duplicate electronic records has been public record since 1992,[1] yet a survey last year of leading e-discovery providers showed that consolidating duplicate electronic records across custodians was done in only half the cases. This caused the volume of records reviewed for relevance or privilege purposes to be 27 percent higher on average than the volume achieved by deduping within individual custodians.[2] Furthermore, the duplicative reviews caused by this approach exposed corporations to risks of sanctions or waiver of privilege because of inconsistent decisions made on different copies of the same records by different reviewers.[3] Duplicate consolidation is a litmus test of sorts for cost effectiveness—if firms aren’t using this basic technology, they are most likely not using other proven technologies such as deNISTing, email threading, domain name analysis or concept clustering, technologies that when used together could reduce legal review bills by as much as 90 percent.
While the slow adoption rate could be caused by a lack of technical competence, the role of economics should not be ignored. Jeffrey Carr, VP, General Counsel and Secretary of FMC Technologies Inc., co-authored an article that claimed that when a company spends $100,000 in legal fees with a firm, the relationship partner is personally impacted by at least $35,000.[4] In other words, in the short term a partner that implements the technology to lower review bills by 90 percent would be significantly reducing his or her personal income from that engagement.
Assuming that lawyers will become technically competent when it is to their financial advantage to do so, the question becomes how to motivate or incentivize lawyers to find and implement cost-effective ways of processing electronic discovery? Implementing a full-blown alternative fee system can require a lot of time and attention from already busy in-house counsel, but there are steps short of that that can be very effective.
The simplest way to start exerting pressure on law firms is to ask them what technologies or processes they are using and to ask them to provide metrics on what savings they are obtaining by the use of that technology. Let them know you’ll be using those metrics as benchmarks when evaluating various firms.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: Inside Counsel
By: Joe Howie
While the slow adoption rate could be caused by a lack of technical competence, the role of economics should not be ignored. Jeffrey Carr, VP, General Counsel and Secretary of FMC Technologies Inc., co-authored an article that claimed that when a company spends $100,000 in legal fees with a firm, the relationship partner is personally impacted by at least $35,000.[4] In other words, in the short term a partner that implements the technology to lower review bills by 90 percent would be significantly reducing his or her personal income from that engagement.
Assuming that lawyers will become technically competent when it is to their financial advantage to do so, the question becomes how to motivate or incentivize lawyers to find and implement cost-effective ways of processing electronic discovery? Implementing a full-blown alternative fee system can require a lot of time and attention from already busy in-house counsel, but there are steps short of that that can be very effective.
The simplest way to start exerting pressure on law firms is to ask them what technologies or processes they are using and to ask them to provide metrics on what savings they are obtaining by the use of that technology. Let them know you’ll be using those metrics as benchmarks when evaluating various firms.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: Inside Counsel
By: Joe Howie
Backup Isn't Dead, It's Just Evolving
The blogosphere can be a crowded, noisy place -- especially when it comes to storage-related topics. Sometimes I think people say outrageous things intentionally.
I suppose if your goal is to draw attention to yourself, the tactic might make sense.
But if your goal is to help others, saying outrageous things just adds to the noise and confusion -- especially around a relatively important topics such as backup -- and really doesn't help anyone.
One of the best examples of this phenomenon in storage land is the recently popular "backup Is dead" meme.
On the face of it, it's simply another attention-getting claim. But upon deeper consideration, there's a bit of merit to the thought.
Certainly, backup -- as we've historically known it -- is undergoing substantial change, but that doesn't mean it's "dead".
Caterpillars turn into butterflies -- but they don't die in the process.
What Do You Mean By "Backup"?
I've always thought of "backup" as the act of creating recoverable data sets in the event that bad things happen.
"Bad things" include hardware and software failure, logical corruption of information -- all the way up to the proverbial "smoking crater" scenario. You want to create a protected view of how information looked at a given particular time -- and put your copies as far away as possible as you can justify.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: chucksblog.emc.com
By: Chuck Hollis
I suppose if your goal is to draw attention to yourself, the tactic might make sense.
But if your goal is to help others, saying outrageous things just adds to the noise and confusion -- especially around a relatively important topics such as backup -- and really doesn't help anyone.
One of the best examples of this phenomenon in storage land is the recently popular "backup Is dead" meme.
On the face of it, it's simply another attention-getting claim. But upon deeper consideration, there's a bit of merit to the thought.
Certainly, backup -- as we've historically known it -- is undergoing substantial change, but that doesn't mean it's "dead".
Caterpillars turn into butterflies -- but they don't die in the process.
What Do You Mean By "Backup"?
I've always thought of "backup" as the act of creating recoverable data sets in the event that bad things happen.
"Bad things" include hardware and software failure, logical corruption of information -- all the way up to the proverbial "smoking crater" scenario. You want to create a protected view of how information looked at a given particular time -- and put your copies as far away as possible as you can justify.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: chucksblog.emc.com
By: Chuck Hollis
The cloud and the future of the Fourth Amendment
In mid-April, a coalition of privacy groups filed a brief in federal district court in Colorado, defending Yahoo against attempts by the federal government to obtain the contents of Yahoo Mail messages without first obtaining a warrant. One month earlier, the Justice Department filed a 17-page brief arguing that Yahoo Mail messages do not fall under current statutory protection because, once opened, those messages are not considered to be in "electronic storage."
The privacy coalition—which included Google—came to Yahoo's defense, arguing that users with e-mail stored in the cloud have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of that e-mail, and should thus be protected from warrantless searches by the government. (Hopefully the irony of Google opposing robust searches is not lost on Google's attorneys.)
Unfortunately, the protections afforded by the warrant requirement have not yet been fully extended to the digital "cloud." This handy metaphor for the ethereal Internet as a storage and access hub is coming to have other implications: can we really conceal our data inside this cloud, shielding it from government intrusion?
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Source: arstechnica.com
By: David A. Couillard
The privacy coalition—which included Google—came to Yahoo's defense, arguing that users with e-mail stored in the cloud have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of that e-mail, and should thus be protected from warrantless searches by the government. (Hopefully the irony of Google opposing robust searches is not lost on Google's attorneys.)
Unfortunately, the protections afforded by the warrant requirement have not yet been fully extended to the digital "cloud." This handy metaphor for the ethereal Internet as a storage and access hub is coming to have other implications: can we really conceal our data inside this cloud, shielding it from government intrusion?
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: arstechnica.com
By: David A. Couillard
Apple Sued Over Touchpad Technology
Apple products -- including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch -- are targets of a patent infringement suit that got a green light Monday from the U.S. International Trade Commission.
The ITC commissioners voted to institute an investigation under section 337 of the Tariff Act against Apple based on a complaint filed by Taiwan's Elan Microelectronics. Elan alleges that Apple is infringing its patent covering electronic devices with multitouch pads and touch-screens, and has asked the ITC to ban the import of all infringing products.
Apple is a frequent visitor to the ITC these days, both as a plaintiff and a defendant. Since January, the company has been sued in two other cases -- one involving camera phones, the other over technology used in mobile phones, portable music players, and computers -- and has filed a complaint alleging infringement of its patents related to personal data and mobile communications devices. Another complaint is awaiting an ITC vote, with Apple going after Eastman Kodak over digital imaging devices.
According to Elan's complaint, the patent at issue "discloses and claims technology that is fundamental to multitouch user interfaces found in many computers and portable electronic devices."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Jenna Greene
The ITC commissioners voted to institute an investigation under section 337 of the Tariff Act against Apple based on a complaint filed by Taiwan's Elan Microelectronics. Elan alleges that Apple is infringing its patent covering electronic devices with multitouch pads and touch-screens, and has asked the ITC to ban the import of all infringing products.
Apple is a frequent visitor to the ITC these days, both as a plaintiff and a defendant. Since January, the company has been sued in two other cases -- one involving camera phones, the other over technology used in mobile phones, portable music players, and computers -- and has filed a complaint alleging infringement of its patents related to personal data and mobile communications devices. Another complaint is awaiting an ITC vote, with Apple going after Eastman Kodak over digital imaging devices.
According to Elan's complaint, the patent at issue "discloses and claims technology that is fundamental to multitouch user interfaces found in many computers and portable electronic devices."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Jenna Greene
Trial Court Abused Discretion in Ordering Forensic Examination Absent Pending Request for Production or Motion to Compel and in Appointing Special Mas
In re Art Harris, 2010 WL 1612205 (Tex. App. Apr. 22, 2010)
In this case, the appellate court granted petitioner’s writ of mandamus and ordered the withdrawal of three underlying discovery orders upon finding that the trial court abused its discretion when it ordered the production of petitioner’s hard drives for forensic examination and when it appointed a special master to conduct that examination.
While the facts are somewhat complicated, it suffices to say that in the course of discovery, petitioner Art Harris was ordered to turn over relevant “electronic media” for forensic investigation despite the fact that there was no pending request for production of such media, no pending request for production of any kind with which he had not complied, and no pending motion to compel. The order compelling production was, instead, the unlikely result of a motion to compel such production from a different defendant. Despite initially indicating that Harris could produce only non-privileged responsive data, the court’s order compelling production of electronic storage media nonetheless included Harris. The court also ordered the appointment of a special master to conduct the forensic examinations.
In addition to compelling Harris’s production of relevant electronic storage media, the court also failed to address Harris’s motion for a protective order and claims of privilege.
Following entry of its order, the court denied Harris’s motions for clarification and reconsideration. Accordingly Harris filed a petition for writ of mandamus.
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Source: ediscoverylaw.com
In this case, the appellate court granted petitioner’s writ of mandamus and ordered the withdrawal of three underlying discovery orders upon finding that the trial court abused its discretion when it ordered the production of petitioner’s hard drives for forensic examination and when it appointed a special master to conduct that examination.
While the facts are somewhat complicated, it suffices to say that in the course of discovery, petitioner Art Harris was ordered to turn over relevant “electronic media” for forensic investigation despite the fact that there was no pending request for production of such media, no pending request for production of any kind with which he had not complied, and no pending motion to compel. The order compelling production was, instead, the unlikely result of a motion to compel such production from a different defendant. Despite initially indicating that Harris could produce only non-privileged responsive data, the court’s order compelling production of electronic storage media nonetheless included Harris. The court also ordered the appointment of a special master to conduct the forensic examinations.
In addition to compelling Harris’s production of relevant electronic storage media, the court also failed to address Harris’s motion for a protective order and claims of privilege.
Following entry of its order, the court denied Harris’s motions for clarification and reconsideration. Accordingly Harris filed a petition for writ of mandamus.
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Source: ediscoverylaw.com
Monday, April 26, 2010
FBI Struggles to Pull Criminal Data from Digital Devices
Non-traditional communications devices such as smartphones and game consoles pose a particular problem to law enforcement agencies trying to milk them for forensic data that reveals criminal activity, attendees were told at the 2010 Computer Forensics Show in New York City.
FBI details most difficult Internet scams
"Forensic tools for cell phones are in their infancy," says Stephen Riley, a forensic examiner with the FBI's Computer Analysis and Response Team. "There's lots of different carriers, different phones, different cables – just try to keep up."Smartphones can communicate via SMS, MMS, mobile e-mail, mobile internet access, VoIP and traditional cellular voice networks, Riley says, making each machine a potential treasure trove of information but also a nightmare maze of possible proprietary technologies to unlock it.
Retrieving SMS messages can depend on the model of phone, the carrier, the time of day, even the country in which the phone is used. SIM cards removed from phones carry potentially useful forensic information, but unless it is associated with a particular phone's PIN, it's inaccessible. Perhaps the personal unlock feature controlled by phone manufacturers could release the data, but that requires knowing the make and model of the phone, he says.
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Source: PC World
By: Tim Greene
FBI details most difficult Internet scams
"Forensic tools for cell phones are in their infancy," says Stephen Riley, a forensic examiner with the FBI's Computer Analysis and Response Team. "There's lots of different carriers, different phones, different cables – just try to keep up."Smartphones can communicate via SMS, MMS, mobile e-mail, mobile internet access, VoIP and traditional cellular voice networks, Riley says, making each machine a potential treasure trove of information but also a nightmare maze of possible proprietary technologies to unlock it.
Retrieving SMS messages can depend on the model of phone, the carrier, the time of day, even the country in which the phone is used. SIM cards removed from phones carry potentially useful forensic information, but unless it is associated with a particular phone's PIN, it's inaccessible. Perhaps the personal unlock feature controlled by phone manufacturers could release the data, but that requires knowing the make and model of the phone, he says.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: PC World
By: Tim Greene
Google's Buzz 'in step with EU privacy rules'
The European Commission has said that Google's Buzz is in line with the bloc's data protection guidelines, while 10 national regulators from Canada to the UK are demanding that Google must change the privacy controls of the social networking site.
The UK is the latest country to join Canada, France, Germany, Spain and five others to complain about a lack of fundamental privacy controls on the site, while the EU is satisfied that Google's Buzz is in step with EU data protection principles.
As far as the EU is concerned, as long as users' data is not used without their prior and tacit consent, then Buzz has not broken any laws.
Gmail users are automatically signed up to the Buzz site unless they intentionally opt-out.
However, the national privacy regulators' complaint stems from growing concerns over how Google uses the private information of Gmail account holders. They insist that users should have "complete control" over the use of their personal details.
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Source: euractiv.com
The UK is the latest country to join Canada, France, Germany, Spain and five others to complain about a lack of fundamental privacy controls on the site, while the EU is satisfied that Google's Buzz is in step with EU data protection principles.
As far as the EU is concerned, as long as users' data is not used without their prior and tacit consent, then Buzz has not broken any laws.
Gmail users are automatically signed up to the Buzz site unless they intentionally opt-out.
However, the national privacy regulators' complaint stems from growing concerns over how Google uses the private information of Gmail account holders. They insist that users should have "complete control" over the use of their personal details.
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Source: euractiv.com
Structured data is neither as easy nor as difficult as it sounds
Lawyers tend to overlook structured data. If they think of it at all when giving disclosure, it goes into the box marked “too difficult to deal with”. A decision that it is disproportionate to handle it may be right, but “decision” implies that that its value has been weighed against cost, which is not the same as just ignoring it. I asked Jim Vint at FTI Technology to give me some examples where structured data was crucial to a case.
In general, lawyers like structure, with its implication of order and of things being in the right place. I do not necessarily mean that they (or “we”, strictly, since I am a lawyer too) prefer that every day is the same from alarm clock to Ovaltine (that is what the civil service is for as a career), but lack of organisation wastes time, and time is money. If you need a library book, your favourite coffee, or a particular iTunes track, then it is helpful to have some degree of pattern and consistency to help you find those of a like kind in a regular place. You expect a library to group its stock by subject and type, and not have law reports, textbooks and periodicals stuffed any old how into random shelves or all over the floor; imagine going into Starbucks and being told that every possible permutation of coffee, chocolate and the rest is in a cup somewhere, but that you must lift each lid to see which is which; you would not appreciate having to scroll down endless lists of iTunes tracks until you find the one you want. We go for the structured stuff every time.
Paradoxically perhaps, the opposite is true when we are dealing with disclosure data. The lawyers can get their minds round the idea of going through thousands of unstructured files – Word documents, spreadsheets, mail messages and the like – but do not want to tangle with the structured data sitting in well-organised databases with names like Oracle, SEP and PeopleSoft. Sometimes, they genuinely do not realise it exists – the nature of some of these databases is that they purr along in the background, quietly holding the business together but invisible to the users; sometimes, their sheer size and the fact that they tend to consist of numbers rather than words makes users deliberately blind to them; quite often, their contents really are irrelevant to the matters in issue in the litigation or investigation. A decision that it is disproportionate to tangle with them is not, however, the same as the unspoken conclusion that they are too difficult to deal with. Limiting them on proportionality grounds implies that the value of their data has been weighed against the costs of extraction and a conclusion reached. That is rather different from oversight or closing one’s mind to their existence.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: eDisclosure Information Project
By: Chris Dale
In general, lawyers like structure, with its implication of order and of things being in the right place. I do not necessarily mean that they (or “we”, strictly, since I am a lawyer too) prefer that every day is the same from alarm clock to Ovaltine (that is what the civil service is for as a career), but lack of organisation wastes time, and time is money. If you need a library book, your favourite coffee, or a particular iTunes track, then it is helpful to have some degree of pattern and consistency to help you find those of a like kind in a regular place. You expect a library to group its stock by subject and type, and not have law reports, textbooks and periodicals stuffed any old how into random shelves or all over the floor; imagine going into Starbucks and being told that every possible permutation of coffee, chocolate and the rest is in a cup somewhere, but that you must lift each lid to see which is which; you would not appreciate having to scroll down endless lists of iTunes tracks until you find the one you want. We go for the structured stuff every time.
Paradoxically perhaps, the opposite is true when we are dealing with disclosure data. The lawyers can get their minds round the idea of going through thousands of unstructured files – Word documents, spreadsheets, mail messages and the like – but do not want to tangle with the structured data sitting in well-organised databases with names like Oracle, SEP and PeopleSoft. Sometimes, they genuinely do not realise it exists – the nature of some of these databases is that they purr along in the background, quietly holding the business together but invisible to the users; sometimes, their sheer size and the fact that they tend to consist of numbers rather than words makes users deliberately blind to them; quite often, their contents really are irrelevant to the matters in issue in the litigation or investigation. A decision that it is disproportionate to tangle with them is not, however, the same as the unspoken conclusion that they are too difficult to deal with. Limiting them on proportionality grounds implies that the value of their data has been weighed against the costs of extraction and a conclusion reached. That is rather different from oversight or closing one’s mind to their existence.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: eDisclosure Information Project
By: Chris Dale
My Homage to Judge David J. Waxse and Kansas City
This week I spent most of my time at The Sedona Conference, on jet planes, or preparing online discovery lessons for law students (and sometimes all three at once). This is one reason my blog this week is a video. (Groans all around by those over 30!) If you are a protodigital who is reading this in the confines of a last-century organization, you know, one where videos are synonymous with games and frivolity, then first go close your door, put on headphones, and hope your dated colleagues don’t see you. Either that, or wait and watch this when you go home or to a Starbucks or something where they will think its cool.
Those of you under thirty are probably wondering what the “___” (fill in your own favorite curse word) I am talking about. I suggest you ask any old-timer what they think of YouTube. Still confused, ask them what they think of any writing that is not dependent on alphanumerics. Be prepared to explain a few things.
Yes friends, I said writings, because in the world of law a video like some of you are about to see, is a writing, a piece of electronically stored information. It can include words, usually spoken. But it can also include information above and beyond mere words. It can convey feelings and energy in a direct manner. It can entertain while it educates (or not). If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a video worth?
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Source: e-discoveryteam.com
By: Ralph Losey
Those of you under thirty are probably wondering what the “___” (fill in your own favorite curse word) I am talking about. I suggest you ask any old-timer what they think of YouTube. Still confused, ask them what they think of any writing that is not dependent on alphanumerics. Be prepared to explain a few things.
Yes friends, I said writings, because in the world of law a video like some of you are about to see, is a writing, a piece of electronically stored information. It can include words, usually spoken. But it can also include information above and beyond mere words. It can convey feelings and energy in a direct manner. It can entertain while it educates (or not). If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a video worth?
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: e-discoveryteam.com
By: Ralph Losey
Sunday, April 25, 2010
A New Law Could Change the Way You Build Database Applications
Massachusetts recently passed a sweeping new data security law that will have a profound impact on the way the United States, and perhaps the rest of the world, manages and develops data-centric applications. Oddly, most people in the business don’t seem to know about it.
Google “Massachusetts data security law, 201 CMR 17.00” and you’ll find plenty of facts about the new law. I also encourage you to read InformationWeek’s "States' Rights Come to Security Forefront: Massachusetts' new data protection law reaches beyond its borders. Are you ready?" It’s one of the best summaries I’ve seen. But even it falls short of helping you understand the profound impact of this law.
Here are the basics of the new law. If you have personally identifiable information (PII) about a Massachusetts resident, such as a first and last name, then you have to encrypt that data on the wire and as it’s persisted. Sending PII over HTTP instead of HTTPS? That’s a big no no. Storing the name of a customer in SQL Server without the data being encrypted? No way, Jose. You’ll get a fine of $5,000 per breach or lost record. If you have a database that contains 1,000 names of Massachusetts residents and lose it without the data being encrypted that’s $5,000,000. Yikes.
Perhaps just as much fun is the fact that to be compliant with the law your company will also need to maintain a Written Information Security Plan (WISP) and file it with the state of Massachusetts. The WISP must address and outline your business’s “technical, administrative, and physical safeguards” that are in place to protect the data. If you lost a laptop without a WISP being filed with Massachusetts, you’re potentially on the hook for a cool million even if the data was encrypted. Yikes again.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: sqlmag.com
By: Brian Moran
Google “Massachusetts data security law, 201 CMR 17.00” and you’ll find plenty of facts about the new law. I also encourage you to read InformationWeek’s "States' Rights Come to Security Forefront: Massachusetts' new data protection law reaches beyond its borders. Are you ready?" It’s one of the best summaries I’ve seen. But even it falls short of helping you understand the profound impact of this law.
Here are the basics of the new law. If you have personally identifiable information (PII) about a Massachusetts resident, such as a first and last name, then you have to encrypt that data on the wire and as it’s persisted. Sending PII over HTTP instead of HTTPS? That’s a big no no. Storing the name of a customer in SQL Server without the data being encrypted? No way, Jose. You’ll get a fine of $5,000 per breach or lost record. If you have a database that contains 1,000 names of Massachusetts residents and lose it without the data being encrypted that’s $5,000,000. Yikes.
Perhaps just as much fun is the fact that to be compliant with the law your company will also need to maintain a Written Information Security Plan (WISP) and file it with the state of Massachusetts. The WISP must address and outline your business’s “technical, administrative, and physical safeguards” that are in place to protect the data. If you lost a laptop without a WISP being filed with Massachusetts, you’re potentially on the hook for a cool million even if the data was encrypted. Yikes again.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: sqlmag.com
By: Brian Moran
Friday, April 23, 2010
How investigators work to combat data theft
In almost two decades of work in the financial services industry, Brad McFarland has spent most of that time heading up fraud investigations. McFarland, currently director of corporate security with The South Financial Group, a South Carolina-based financial services holding company, is also responsible for the organization's physical security and loss preventions in addition to fraud investigation.
Over the course of his career, McFarland has seen drastic changes to the emphasis and importance placed on fraud. In the past, said McFarland "Many institutions did not employ fraud investigators. Fraud was a cost of doing business."
But times have changed. Thanks not only regulatory requirements, the reputational pressures a financial firms faces in an age of rampant data leakage and identity theft have now made stopping fraud a main priority. And that means the way investigations are conducted have evolved, too. McFarland gave CSO a break down of how fraud investigators, corporate, physical and information security now come together in a combined mission to stay one step ahead of the bad guys.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: cio.com.au
By: Joan Goodchild
Over the course of his career, McFarland has seen drastic changes to the emphasis and importance placed on fraud. In the past, said McFarland "Many institutions did not employ fraud investigators. Fraud was a cost of doing business."
But times have changed. Thanks not only regulatory requirements, the reputational pressures a financial firms faces in an age of rampant data leakage and identity theft have now made stopping fraud a main priority. And that means the way investigations are conducted have evolved, too. McFarland gave CSO a break down of how fraud investigators, corporate, physical and information security now come together in a combined mission to stay one step ahead of the bad guys.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: cio.com.au
By: Joan Goodchild
AIIM 2010: Compliance still drives ECM adoption
Enterprise content management has become a necessary product and process for many businesses, but experts don't always agree on what's motivating companies to get organized. ECM was discussed in sessions and expo hall booths at AIIM 2010, but after all of this week's rhetoric one couldn't help but feel a little underwhelmed by the arguments for ECM.
For the most part, ECM was discussed in the context of compliance. "One of the biggest drivers for ECM is compliance, risk management, and meeting the requirements in case something comes to litigation," said Arvind Krishna, a senior consultant with the IQ business Group.
Suresh Shenoy, executive VP at Information Management Consultants, echoed Krishna's sentiments when he warned, "It's great to have content, but if you don't know how to secure it, you're opening yourself to a floodgate of potential litigation."
After years of development in ECM technology and a growing movement toward better data organization in the enterprise, it's hard to believe compliance, risk management and eDiscovery are the only arguments for ECM implementation. The question remains: Compliance? Really, ECM, that's all you've got?
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Source: fiercecontentmanagement.com
By: Molly Bernhart Walker
For the most part, ECM was discussed in the context of compliance. "One of the biggest drivers for ECM is compliance, risk management, and meeting the requirements in case something comes to litigation," said Arvind Krishna, a senior consultant with the IQ business Group.
Suresh Shenoy, executive VP at Information Management Consultants, echoed Krishna's sentiments when he warned, "It's great to have content, but if you don't know how to secure it, you're opening yourself to a floodgate of potential litigation."
After years of development in ECM technology and a growing movement toward better data organization in the enterprise, it's hard to believe compliance, risk management and eDiscovery are the only arguments for ECM implementation. The question remains: Compliance? Really, ECM, that's all you've got?
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: fiercecontentmanagement.com
By: Molly Bernhart Walker
Thursday, April 22, 2010
United States Supreme Court Hears Argument on Expectation of Privacy as to Text Messages on Work Pager
Quon v. Arch Wireless Operating Co., 529 F.3d 892 (9th Cir. 2008); City of Ontario v. Quon (08-1332)
In the summer of 2008, the Ninth Circuit held that a city employee had a reasonable expectation of privacy as to personal text-messages sent from his city-issued and city-owned text-messaging pager (‘pager”). The court further ruled that the employee’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when his supervisor read those text messages, after requesting transcripts from the service provider. The city has appealed the court’s findings to the United States Supreme Court and oral arguments were heard on Monday, April 19th. An opinion is expected in June, 2010.
The relevant facts are as follows. In late 2001 or early 2002, pagers were issued to city employees, including Sergeant Jeff Quon, a member of the police department. There was no official policy regarding text-messaging on the pagers. The City did have a general “Computer Usage Internet, and E-mail Policy”, however, which made clear that the use of city-owned “tools” was limited to business and that “use of these tools for personal benefit” was a “significant violation” of the City’s policy. The policy also reserved the right of the City to monitor use and stated specifically that the email system was “not confidential”. In 2000, Quon signed an acknowledgement of this policy. In 2002, Quon attended a meeting at which Lieutenant Steve Duke informed the attendees that all pager messages were considered email and would fall under the City’s relevant policy.
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Source: ediscoverylaw.com
In the summer of 2008, the Ninth Circuit held that a city employee had a reasonable expectation of privacy as to personal text-messages sent from his city-issued and city-owned text-messaging pager (‘pager”). The court further ruled that the employee’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when his supervisor read those text messages, after requesting transcripts from the service provider. The city has appealed the court’s findings to the United States Supreme Court and oral arguments were heard on Monday, April 19th. An opinion is expected in June, 2010.
The relevant facts are as follows. In late 2001 or early 2002, pagers were issued to city employees, including Sergeant Jeff Quon, a member of the police department. There was no official policy regarding text-messaging on the pagers. The City did have a general “Computer Usage Internet, and E-mail Policy”, however, which made clear that the use of city-owned “tools” was limited to business and that “use of these tools for personal benefit” was a “significant violation” of the City’s policy. The policy also reserved the right of the City to monitor use and stated specifically that the email system was “not confidential”. In 2000, Quon signed an acknowledgement of this policy. In 2002, Quon attended a meeting at which Lieutenant Steve Duke informed the attendees that all pager messages were considered email and would fall under the City’s relevant policy.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: ediscoverylaw.com
Cloud computing security and compliance issues challenge banks
Financial services firms, wary of cloud computing, are looking to a new hybrid public-private cloud strategy to ease concerns.
While compute clouds promise inexpensive and plentiful computing resources, the lack of standard security practices, concerns about the implications on compliance frameworks and operational risk worries have led many users in the financial services industry to adopt a hybrid public-private cloud strategy, according to members of the industry
"Standardization and things like compliance are very nebulous in the cloud environment right now, especially on the public cloud side," says Iran Hutchinson, product manager at integration software provider InterSystems, who participated in a recent panel discussion at the Waters Power event last week in Manhattan, hosted by sibling publication Waters. "Our customers prefer the private cloud providers because the clients have full control over their infrastructure and can perform SAS 70 audits."
Knowing where a data trail ends in terms of auditing and logging is a major concern, says panelist Vijay Luthra, head of infrastructure at Artio Global Investors. Such issues have led his firm to work with more SAS 70-compliant providers than public cloud providers. "Their service level agreements (SLAs) define where exactly the data is sitting and what type of data is sitting with them," he explains. "There is a lot more control and we have warmed up to SAS 70-compliant applications. We currently are using Salesforce.com and a service management platform called Service-now.com."
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Source: risk.net
By: Rob Daly
While compute clouds promise inexpensive and plentiful computing resources, the lack of standard security practices, concerns about the implications on compliance frameworks and operational risk worries have led many users in the financial services industry to adopt a hybrid public-private cloud strategy, according to members of the industry
"Standardization and things like compliance are very nebulous in the cloud environment right now, especially on the public cloud side," says Iran Hutchinson, product manager at integration software provider InterSystems, who participated in a recent panel discussion at the Waters Power event last week in Manhattan, hosted by sibling publication Waters. "Our customers prefer the private cloud providers because the clients have full control over their infrastructure and can perform SAS 70 audits."
Knowing where a data trail ends in terms of auditing and logging is a major concern, says panelist Vijay Luthra, head of infrastructure at Artio Global Investors. Such issues have led his firm to work with more SAS 70-compliant providers than public cloud providers. "Their service level agreements (SLAs) define where exactly the data is sitting and what type of data is sitting with them," he explains. "There is a lot more control and we have warmed up to SAS 70-compliant applications. We currently are using Salesforce.com and a service management platform called Service-now.com."
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Source: risk.net
By: Rob Daly
How to Negotiate a Better Cloud Computing Contract
The typical cloud computing contract can look downright simple to an experienced IT outsourcing customer accustomed to inking pacts hundreds of pages long that outline service levels and penalties, pricing and benchmarks, processes and procedures, security and business continuity requirements, and clauses delineating the rights and responsibilities of the IT services supplier and customer.
And that simplicity, say IT outsourcing experts, is the problem with cloud computing.
"Failure to understand the true meaning of the cloud and to address the serious legal and contractual issues associated with cloud computing can be catastrophic," says Daniel Masur, a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of law firm Mayer Brown. "The data security issues are particularly challenging, and failure to address them in the contract can expose a customer to serious violations of applicable privacy laws."
If a cloud services contract (whether it's for software-, infrastructure- or platform-as a service) seems less complex, that's because it's designed to offer products and services "as is"--without any vendor representations or warranties, responsibility for adequate security or data protection, or liability for damages, says Masur. (See Cloud-Computing Services: "Fine Print" Disappointment Forecasted.)
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Source: sfgate.com
By: Stephanie Overby
And that simplicity, say IT outsourcing experts, is the problem with cloud computing.
"Failure to understand the true meaning of the cloud and to address the serious legal and contractual issues associated with cloud computing can be catastrophic," says Daniel Masur, a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of law firm Mayer Brown. "The data security issues are particularly challenging, and failure to address them in the contract can expose a customer to serious violations of applicable privacy laws."
If a cloud services contract (whether it's for software-, infrastructure- or platform-as a service) seems less complex, that's because it's designed to offer products and services "as is"--without any vendor representations or warranties, responsibility for adequate security or data protection, or liability for damages, says Masur. (See Cloud-Computing Services: "Fine Print" Disappointment Forecasted.)
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Source: sfgate.com
By: Stephanie Overby
Don't Let Litigation Get Lost in Translation
Can language conversion software cut cross-border litigation bills?
When in litigation, knowing the exact contents of e-mails, faxes, letters, and other documents is crucial, but tough when they're in a language other than your own.
Take David Kessler. The Drinker Biddle & Reath partner remembers working on one matter involving a multinational company. Although most of the discovery was in English, the legal team found that a few of the company's employees e-mailed each other in an Eastern European language. Thinking that it was odd, they decided to use machine translation to get a sense of what the messages said. They turned out to be linchpins in the case -- and Kessler learned something important about translation technology.
"Machine translations are not very good at idioms, not very good in context, but they can be useful in terms of getting a sense of the document to let you decide if you want to spend more money," Kessler says.
In an increasingly global economy, a single matter can involve a variety of languages. Unfortunately, it can be costly translating the documents. Many corporations have found that translation technology and e-discovery tools supporting multiple languages are important tools in constraining budgets -- and winning cases. But there are also drawbacks. Used incorrectly, the software can fail to save time, increase some translation costs, and even overlook documents in an e-discovery keyword search.
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Source: law.com
By: Erik Sherman
When in litigation, knowing the exact contents of e-mails, faxes, letters, and other documents is crucial, but tough when they're in a language other than your own.
Take David Kessler. The Drinker Biddle & Reath partner remembers working on one matter involving a multinational company. Although most of the discovery was in English, the legal team found that a few of the company's employees e-mailed each other in an Eastern European language. Thinking that it was odd, they decided to use machine translation to get a sense of what the messages said. They turned out to be linchpins in the case -- and Kessler learned something important about translation technology.
"Machine translations are not very good at idioms, not very good in context, but they can be useful in terms of getting a sense of the document to let you decide if you want to spend more money," Kessler says.
In an increasingly global economy, a single matter can involve a variety of languages. Unfortunately, it can be costly translating the documents. Many corporations have found that translation technology and e-discovery tools supporting multiple languages are important tools in constraining budgets -- and winning cases. But there are also drawbacks. Used incorrectly, the software can fail to save time, increase some translation costs, and even overlook documents in an e-discovery keyword search.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Erik Sherman
Encrypt everything
Companies stand to lose their reputation, not to mention business, in cases of severe data loss. One way to prevent the inadvertent leakage of information is to go in for encryption to secure data on hard drives, flash drives and the like. Subhankar Kundu looks at the different aspects of data encryption in the corporate world
Businesses are striving to protect vital data from internal and external threats. Today, there are three sources from where the threats have been tracked namely malicious external attacks, malicious insiders and unplanned leakage on the part of insiders. The high volume of unstructured data flowing through the average enterprise defeats attempts at protecting data for the greater part.
Preventing data loss has become a primary focus of IT security today. A multitude of software and appliances are being deployed to address these issues. Although unauthorized intrusions have been hyped up CIOs today are equally if not more concerned about the inadvertent leakage of information from inside.
The industry needs to ponder upon how to deal with organizational insiders or which are the right applications or policies that can scrutinize the information being sent out of the network. This is the core of the immensely complex problem of data loss.
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Source: expresscomputeronline.com
By: Subhankar Kundu
Businesses are striving to protect vital data from internal and external threats. Today, there are three sources from where the threats have been tracked namely malicious external attacks, malicious insiders and unplanned leakage on the part of insiders. The high volume of unstructured data flowing through the average enterprise defeats attempts at protecting data for the greater part.
Preventing data loss has become a primary focus of IT security today. A multitude of software and appliances are being deployed to address these issues. Although unauthorized intrusions have been hyped up CIOs today are equally if not more concerned about the inadvertent leakage of information from inside.
The industry needs to ponder upon how to deal with organizational insiders or which are the right applications or policies that can scrutinize the information being sent out of the network. This is the core of the immensely complex problem of data loss.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: expresscomputeronline.com
By: Subhankar Kundu
Financial reform And GRC
I was able to catch pieces of live testimony in front of the House Financial Services Committee yesterday on the Lehman Brothers collapse (covered via live blog by the Wall Street Journal).
It was interesting to watch former Lehman head Richard Fuld reluctantly attempt to explain to an understandably skeptical audience, “We were risk averse,” in the period leading up to the company’s collapse.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs is back in the spotlight after the SEC leveled charges of fraud against the company last week related to alleged misstatements and omissions in the marketing of specific financial products. While this seems like a relatively small initial shot at the large financial firms, the SEC appears to be reasserting its authority after a series of embarrassing stories have come out about failures of oversight including Madoff, Stanford, and now Lehman.
So what does all this mean for governance, risk, and compliance professionals?
It’s hard to tell what might come of the fraud charges against Goldman Sachs, but if anything, this appears to build a case for more rigorous compliance policies and manual oversight. It’s hard to see how automated controls could have helped here, but the case could involve substantial e-discovery to determine how certain marketing decisions were made.
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Source: computerworlduk.com
By: Chris McClean
It was interesting to watch former Lehman head Richard Fuld reluctantly attempt to explain to an understandably skeptical audience, “We were risk averse,” in the period leading up to the company’s collapse.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs is back in the spotlight after the SEC leveled charges of fraud against the company last week related to alleged misstatements and omissions in the marketing of specific financial products. While this seems like a relatively small initial shot at the large financial firms, the SEC appears to be reasserting its authority after a series of embarrassing stories have come out about failures of oversight including Madoff, Stanford, and now Lehman.
So what does all this mean for governance, risk, and compliance professionals?
It’s hard to tell what might come of the fraud charges against Goldman Sachs, but if anything, this appears to build a case for more rigorous compliance policies and manual oversight. It’s hard to see how automated controls could have helped here, but the case could involve substantial e-discovery to determine how certain marketing decisions were made.
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Source: computerworlduk.com
By: Chris McClean
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
3 Things You Don't Want to Do in eDiscovery
I'd like to start by thanking Simon Taylor for the invitation to contribute to his blog. I am thrilled to have a place to share my thoughts on the latest developments in eDiscovery and to address real-world information management challenges. My name is Shannon Smith and I'm the eDiscovery and Archiving Specialist for CommVault here in the West. I'm an attorney and have been active in the eDiscovery and compliance space for six years, two of those with CommVault.
In this posting, I'd like to switch things up a bit and identify some of the "don'ts" of eDiscovery. I think the industry has done a good job providing a catalog of best practices on the topic but I'd like to take a moment to call out some of the gotchas and landmines that can derail even the most straight forward eDiscovery effort.
1. Don't assume that your IT department can quickly locate, sift through, and deliver data based on the simplest of criteria.
Most IT departments are structured to support the day-to-day operations of an organization and activities might include application and desktop management, data protection, network security, infrastructure maintenance, and a whole host of other responsibilities. When Legal issues a request for data, the effort involved in obtaining the emails or documents may be manual and arduous, depending on the technology and processes in place. Unless you've engaged your IT resources and identified what tools are necessary to locate and process large volumes of data for eDiscovery, it would be unwise to assume that IT has the technology and resources to execute a simple discovery request.
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Source: news.commvault.com
By: Shannon Smith
In this posting, I'd like to switch things up a bit and identify some of the "don'ts" of eDiscovery. I think the industry has done a good job providing a catalog of best practices on the topic but I'd like to take a moment to call out some of the gotchas and landmines that can derail even the most straight forward eDiscovery effort.
1. Don't assume that your IT department can quickly locate, sift through, and deliver data based on the simplest of criteria.
Most IT departments are structured to support the day-to-day operations of an organization and activities might include application and desktop management, data protection, network security, infrastructure maintenance, and a whole host of other responsibilities. When Legal issues a request for data, the effort involved in obtaining the emails or documents may be manual and arduous, depending on the technology and processes in place. Unless you've engaged your IT resources and identified what tools are necessary to locate and process large volumes of data for eDiscovery, it would be unwise to assume that IT has the technology and resources to execute a simple discovery request.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: news.commvault.com
By: Shannon Smith
Is Google About to be Lawyered to Death?
A Santa Monica, Calif.-based consumer group called Consumer Watchdog has called on the U.S. Justice Department to investigate and take action against Google. One "remedy" being suggested is the break up of Google into multiple companies.
One of the lawyers involved in a press conference held to announce the group's call to action was Gary Reback, who is most famous for leading the anti-trust charge against Microsoft in the late 1990s. Reback is also founder of the Open Book Alliance, which exists to oppose organizations -- especially Google -- which seek to "monopolize" control of digital books. Reback is out to get Google. But he's not the only one.
The FTC is delaying Google's $750 million acquisition of AdMob, which is a mobile advertising company, while they look at how the deal would affect competitiveness in market. It's possible that the commission might try to block the acquisition in the courts.
European antitrust regulators are investigating claims that Google favorably ranks itself in search results and unfavorably ranks competitors.
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Source: Datamation
By: Mike Elgan
One of the lawyers involved in a press conference held to announce the group's call to action was Gary Reback, who is most famous for leading the anti-trust charge against Microsoft in the late 1990s. Reback is also founder of the Open Book Alliance, which exists to oppose organizations -- especially Google -- which seek to "monopolize" control of digital books. Reback is out to get Google. But he's not the only one.
The FTC is delaying Google's $750 million acquisition of AdMob, which is a mobile advertising company, while they look at how the deal would affect competitiveness in market. It's possible that the commission might try to block the acquisition in the courts.
European antitrust regulators are investigating claims that Google favorably ranks itself in search results and unfavorably ranks competitors.
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Source: Datamation
By: Mike Elgan
Searching by Date? Be Very, Very Careful…
During a recent software testing engagement, I ran into an interesting issue with date based searches that could impact your discovery search results. The root of the issue is based in the different ways of representing communication attachments or other multipart items such as Sharepoint/wiki page attachments. In the dark ages of eDiscovery, our software was designed to simulate the myriad physical attachment levels of scanned paper documents. I am not ashamed to recall coding levels of staple, clip and binder groupings back in IPRO ver. 1.5. The system enabled an attorney to determine the exact hierarchical relationship of that individual document to all the others scanned from that box retrieved from Iron Mountain. Newcomers to our field cannot imagine the labor required to manually code in Author, Recipients, Subject and other fields that are now extracted from ESI during processing.
But even in the dark ages of discovery, we knew that assigning a date to a ‘document’ was not always a straightforward proposition. Experienced paralegals managing a large review would give coders a date ‘trumping’ order for the known document types. For example, the contract signature date might beat out the draft date or effective date on a contract. These general rules would have to be constantly updated as new document types or attachment types surfaced. That works when you have a dedicated, experienced project manager actively looking at documents with the ability to succinctly describe handling options and potential consequences to counsel. The review or preview of 100,000 documents once required weeks of team labor and human eyes on every ‘page’. The crop of new ECA software and appliances like Clearwell, Stratify eVantage, Nuix and archiving platforms with discovery interfaces enables a single counsel to dig into the ESI without having to think about all these choices. That does not mean that the choices are not being made, it just means that the product development team made the default document handling decisions based on their concept of the broadest review scenario. Those of us who actually do discovery have learned the hard way that any case can break the rules based on the issues, parties and ESI profiles.
There has always been room for argument on both sides of the ‘item granularity’ battle that dictates whether child attachments get separate records within a review platform or are consolidated into the parent record. In the example below, you can see that we have three potential dates associated with our email.
On a simple level, you can see how the dates could break out in the record fields.
Depending on how we decide to handle this, our search for terms in items from 2009 may or may not get a hit, even if they are located inside a document that was created inside the search date range. This same problem can occur within single items depending on the default date that the search acts on. As a sharp client pointed out, a mythical email to the CEO of Toyota containing a one year old accelerator problem analysis might be missed. Timing can be everything in a case and the context of an item may not always be the key date if you do not know it exists.
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Source: eDiscovery Journal
By: Greg Buckles
But even in the dark ages of discovery, we knew that assigning a date to a ‘document’ was not always a straightforward proposition. Experienced paralegals managing a large review would give coders a date ‘trumping’ order for the known document types. For example, the contract signature date might beat out the draft date or effective date on a contract. These general rules would have to be constantly updated as new document types or attachment types surfaced. That works when you have a dedicated, experienced project manager actively looking at documents with the ability to succinctly describe handling options and potential consequences to counsel. The review or preview of 100,000 documents once required weeks of team labor and human eyes on every ‘page’. The crop of new ECA software and appliances like Clearwell, Stratify eVantage, Nuix and archiving platforms with discovery interfaces enables a single counsel to dig into the ESI without having to think about all these choices. That does not mean that the choices are not being made, it just means that the product development team made the default document handling decisions based on their concept of the broadest review scenario. Those of us who actually do discovery have learned the hard way that any case can break the rules based on the issues, parties and ESI profiles.
There has always been room for argument on both sides of the ‘item granularity’ battle that dictates whether child attachments get separate records within a review platform or are consolidated into the parent record. In the example below, you can see that we have three potential dates associated with our email.
On a simple level, you can see how the dates could break out in the record fields.
Depending on how we decide to handle this, our search for terms in items from 2009 may or may not get a hit, even if they are located inside a document that was created inside the search date range. This same problem can occur within single items depending on the default date that the search acts on. As a sharp client pointed out, a mythical email to the CEO of Toyota containing a one year old accelerator problem analysis might be missed. Timing can be everything in a case and the context of an item may not always be the key date if you do not know it exists.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: eDiscovery Journal
By: Greg Buckles
Global CIO: Steve Ballmer Interview: 'Hockey Stick' Cloud Growth Ahead
Microsoft CEO talks about new competition with Google, Amazon, and Salesforce, and why CIOs now are ready for cloud computing.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has sent a message of late that Microsoft is "all in" when it comes to cloud computing. In an interview with InformationWeek editors, Ballmer made clear that this all-in cloud computing bet isn't merely a long-term, over-the-horizon play. The cloud growth--"hockey stick" growth, he said -- is taking off right now. And Ballmer makes a passionate case for how the investment Microsoft has made in cloud computing products and infrastructure over the last five years makes it different from rivals Google, Amazon, and Salesforce.
We pushed to clarify--when does that hockey stick growth take off? We're not there yet, right? "I don't know. It sure feels like we're there today to me," Ballmer said.
Bay Area Internet SolutionsHe added, however, that most lines of business software--industry-specific applications or transaction systems, for example--aren't going to the cloud en masse yet. Platform as a service offerings, like Microsoft's Azure, haven't taken off. But with what he calls "information worker infrastructure" -- think Exchange, SharePoint, and Office software -- CIOs are ready to move quickly to the cloud.
"Look, I don't want to oversell or undersell, but the truth of the matter is there is not an enterprise customer I visit today where this is not an issue -- just not," Ballmer said. Any CIO considering an upgrade to the company's e-mail or other collaboration platforms has to at least consider going to a cloud-based infrastructure. "Everybody is saying, look, next time I touch anything, I'm going. If I'm not touching anything, maybe I don't go," Ballmer said. "But if I'm really going to touch something, I'm going to have this [cloud] discussion."
Ballmer kicked off our discussion in fine form, busting my colleague Fritz Nelson's chops for using an iPad hooked to a flimsy-looking keyboard to take notes. "Spend enough time and money, and you can make anything work like a PC," he cracked.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: Informationweek
By: Chris Murphy
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has sent a message of late that Microsoft is "all in" when it comes to cloud computing. In an interview with InformationWeek editors, Ballmer made clear that this all-in cloud computing bet isn't merely a long-term, over-the-horizon play. The cloud growth--"hockey stick" growth, he said -- is taking off right now. And Ballmer makes a passionate case for how the investment Microsoft has made in cloud computing products and infrastructure over the last five years makes it different from rivals Google, Amazon, and Salesforce.
We pushed to clarify--when does that hockey stick growth take off? We're not there yet, right? "I don't know. It sure feels like we're there today to me," Ballmer said.
Bay Area Internet SolutionsHe added, however, that most lines of business software--industry-specific applications or transaction systems, for example--aren't going to the cloud en masse yet. Platform as a service offerings, like Microsoft's Azure, haven't taken off. But with what he calls "information worker infrastructure" -- think Exchange, SharePoint, and Office software -- CIOs are ready to move quickly to the cloud.
"Look, I don't want to oversell or undersell, but the truth of the matter is there is not an enterprise customer I visit today where this is not an issue -- just not," Ballmer said. Any CIO considering an upgrade to the company's e-mail or other collaboration platforms has to at least consider going to a cloud-based infrastructure. "Everybody is saying, look, next time I touch anything, I'm going. If I'm not touching anything, maybe I don't go," Ballmer said. "But if I'm really going to touch something, I'm going to have this [cloud] discussion."
Ballmer kicked off our discussion in fine form, busting my colleague Fritz Nelson's chops for using an iPad hooked to a flimsy-looking keyboard to take notes. "Spend enough time and money, and you can make anything work like a PC," he cracked.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: Informationweek
By: Chris Murphy
Step Two: Addressing Security And Privacy
Now that cloud computing has passed the technology test (that is, for the most part, it works), what areas need the most attention? Without a doubt, security and privacy are at the top of that list.
Towards that end, Microsoft is looking to the federal government to create legislation regulating cloud computing in just those areas. "We need government to modernize the laws, adapt them to the cloud, and adopt new measures to protect privacy and promote security," said Brad Smith, the company's general counsel in an address at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. a few months ago.
Security, of course, has been a concern about cloud computing since day one. It takes a leap of faith to turn over sensitive or competitive corporate data to a third party. In a recent InformationWeek Analytics survey, "concerns over security" tied for first place as the reason why business technologists were not using software-as-a-service; the other top concern was "no business requirement."
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Source: informationweek.com
By: John Soat
Towards that end, Microsoft is looking to the federal government to create legislation regulating cloud computing in just those areas. "We need government to modernize the laws, adapt them to the cloud, and adopt new measures to protect privacy and promote security," said Brad Smith, the company's general counsel in an address at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. a few months ago.
Security, of course, has been a concern about cloud computing since day one. It takes a leap of faith to turn over sensitive or competitive corporate data to a third party. In a recent InformationWeek Analytics survey, "concerns over security" tied for first place as the reason why business technologists were not using software-as-a-service; the other top concern was "no business requirement."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: informationweek.com
By: John Soat
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
'They Can Sue You': Navigating the Foreign e-Discovery Mine Field
Handling electronic discovery in a foreign country means navigating a mine field of competing legal interests, in-house lawyer Alexander Shapiro told a group of in-house and outside counsel last week.
Shapiro, managing director and senior litigation counsel at The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, spoke at the 2010 spring meeting of the American Bar Association Section of International Law in New York. Prior to joining BNY Mellon, he spent 10 years as a government lawyer, including as an assistant U.S. attorney in New York.
"Private communications in the workplace are a fundamental freedom in Europe," Shapiro warned. "You have a duty of privacy to your customers in the foreign jurisdiction, and to your employees. They can sue you if you violate it. And bank secrecy laws have criminal provisions."
One unidentified lawyer in the audience pointed out that in Europe both a company's in-house lawyer and outside counsel can be charged for violating those laws, as well as the corporation itself.
In addition, Shapiro said some countries, such as Germany, have a blocking statute that bars a bank from sending documents out of country for a pretrial proceeding.
So what if you have a U.S. judge demanding discovery of bank documents in Germany? "Your job is to navigate the competing pressures," Shapiro said. He advised talking to all parties and judges involved, and trying to obtain privacy waivers from employees.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Sue Reisinger
Shapiro, managing director and senior litigation counsel at The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, spoke at the 2010 spring meeting of the American Bar Association Section of International Law in New York. Prior to joining BNY Mellon, he spent 10 years as a government lawyer, including as an assistant U.S. attorney in New York.
"Private communications in the workplace are a fundamental freedom in Europe," Shapiro warned. "You have a duty of privacy to your customers in the foreign jurisdiction, and to your employees. They can sue you if you violate it. And bank secrecy laws have criminal provisions."
One unidentified lawyer in the audience pointed out that in Europe both a company's in-house lawyer and outside counsel can be charged for violating those laws, as well as the corporation itself.
In addition, Shapiro said some countries, such as Germany, have a blocking statute that bars a bank from sending documents out of country for a pretrial proceeding.
So what if you have a U.S. judge demanding discovery of bank documents in Germany? "Your job is to navigate the competing pressures," Shapiro said. He advised talking to all parties and judges involved, and trying to obtain privacy waivers from employees.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Sue Reisinger
Dissemination of Inappropriate Digital Content Has Created the Need for E-Discovery: Are IT professionals and Legal Experts ready?
Legal proceedings, both criminal and civil, have been an integral part of every society for as long as we can remember. And despite upholding their fundamental principles, they have been impacted by this digital era and the changes it has brought. In criminal and civil cases there is a process known as Discovery which is the initial phase of litigation where the parties in a dispute are required to provide each other relevant information and records, along with all other evidence related to the case. Discovery in modern litigation that deal with information created and stored in electronic format is referred to as electronic discovery or e-Discovery. E-Discovery is not without complexity because it involves Information Technology departments (henceforth referred to as IT). Since e-Discovery involves IT departments, I will make it the focus of today’s article. Please note that I approach the topic as an IT professional; not as an attorney, judge or legal expert.
The term E-Discovery was coined in 2006 in an amendment to the US Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Those amendments led to the codification of requirements to provide electronic information and records in discovery processes known as Electronically Stored Information (ESI). Information such as documents prepared using Microsoft Office or OpenOffice, video recordings, voicemails, emails, images, instant messages, chats, computer viruses, Trojan horse, etc… are all considered electronically stored information or ESI. The aforementioned examples of electronically stored information can be considered evidence in a court of law. ESI can be summoned by governments or courts of law; and when it is, it must be retrieved from the source of storage. In this situation, IT departments work with legal experts from both sides of a case to garner evidence needed to proceed with the case. Since 90 % of today’s communication is said to be done electronically, IT professionals have come to play a major role in e-Discovery.
In Liberia, there have been several incidents that involve and have involved data that are/were electronically stored. Emails, videos images, etc., all electronically formatted “documents” can be considered evidence in a court of law. The past and most recent incident in Liberia involving the electronic dissemination (through mobile phones or the Internet) of inappropriate images/videos is a case in point. Since the tool and medium used to create and distribute the “content” were electronic, e-Discovery will be the process used to retrieve the majority or the most crucial piece of information that will be worth presenting as evidence in this case. However, a court summons or government order is usually required. In some cases, it might be difficult to retrieve “discoverable materials” from a mobile device since the tools required to perform such task may not be readily available in Liberia.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: liberianobserver.com
By: Darren Wilkins
The term E-Discovery was coined in 2006 in an amendment to the US Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Those amendments led to the codification of requirements to provide electronic information and records in discovery processes known as Electronically Stored Information (ESI). Information such as documents prepared using Microsoft Office or OpenOffice, video recordings, voicemails, emails, images, instant messages, chats, computer viruses, Trojan horse, etc… are all considered electronically stored information or ESI. The aforementioned examples of electronically stored information can be considered evidence in a court of law. ESI can be summoned by governments or courts of law; and when it is, it must be retrieved from the source of storage. In this situation, IT departments work with legal experts from both sides of a case to garner evidence needed to proceed with the case. Since 90 % of today’s communication is said to be done electronically, IT professionals have come to play a major role in e-Discovery.
In Liberia, there have been several incidents that involve and have involved data that are/were electronically stored. Emails, videos images, etc., all electronically formatted “documents” can be considered evidence in a court of law. The past and most recent incident in Liberia involving the electronic dissemination (through mobile phones or the Internet) of inappropriate images/videos is a case in point. Since the tool and medium used to create and distribute the “content” were electronic, e-Discovery will be the process used to retrieve the majority or the most crucial piece of information that will be worth presenting as evidence in this case. However, a court summons or government order is usually required. In some cases, it might be difficult to retrieve “discoverable materials” from a mobile device since the tools required to perform such task may not be readily available in Liberia.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: liberianobserver.com
By: Darren Wilkins
3 Ways SharePoint 2010 Supports eDiscovery
A few months ago we outlined the ways that new features of SharePoint 2010 help evolve document management processes. This week, we’re showing you how SharePoint 2010 enhances eDiscovery.
SharePoint 2010 Three New eDiscovery Features
Recently, Quentin Christensen, a program manager at Microsoft commented on Microsoft’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Team Blog about how eDiscovery capabilities have been greatly expanded to provide more functionality.
SharePoint 2010 primarily addresses the left side of the EDRM model, that is, it manages information, identifies, preserves and collects data relevant to a search. Its proactive approach provides a governance framework necessary for applying policies so that content can be managed and deleted when it is no longer needed.
SharePoint’s three major eDiscovery improvements include processes that further the platform’s goals of reducing costs and improving legal compliance.
1. Managing and Adding Holds
Hold and eDiscovery is a site level feature that can be activated on any site. Users can activate this feature to create new categories in Site Settings that provides links to Holds and Hold Reports lists. Once created, users can also create holds, and search content, adding to hold any content in the site collection.
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Source: cmswire.com
By: Marisa Peacock
SharePoint 2010 Three New eDiscovery Features
Recently, Quentin Christensen, a program manager at Microsoft commented on Microsoft’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Team Blog about how eDiscovery capabilities have been greatly expanded to provide more functionality.
SharePoint 2010 primarily addresses the left side of the EDRM model, that is, it manages information, identifies, preserves and collects data relevant to a search. Its proactive approach provides a governance framework necessary for applying policies so that content can be managed and deleted when it is no longer needed.
SharePoint’s three major eDiscovery improvements include processes that further the platform’s goals of reducing costs and improving legal compliance.
1. Managing and Adding Holds
Hold and eDiscovery is a site level feature that can be activated on any site. Users can activate this feature to create new categories in Site Settings that provides links to Holds and Hold Reports lists. Once created, users can also create holds, and search content, adding to hold any content in the site collection.
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Source: cmswire.com
By: Marisa Peacock
Tailor Cloud-Computing Contracts for EDD
Cloud computing is a burgeoning field in the information technology world and will leave few businesses untouched. Lawyers, too, must familiarize themselves with the special challenges cloud computing poses, particularly for electronic discovery. Attorneys must ensure that contracts clients enter into with cloud computing service providers contain language covering litigation support, documentation retention and destruction, the return of data from the provider to the client, and the format and cost of providing such data.
Electronically stored information has transformed discovery and can quickly dwarf other costs of litigation. In e-discovery, in-house IT staff may find themselves working extra shifts to gather backup tapes from off-site storage; address custody-and-control issues; and obtain litigation support software to search e-mail, file servers, and backups.
But e-discovery is more familiar to most organizations than cloud computing. "Cloud computing" generally refers to a collection of technology and service offerings aimed at reducing or eliminating a company's need for in-house IT staff and resources by making similar resources available over the internet. Key business technology functions such as e-mail, file storage, and many applications -- together with staff to administrate and support them -- are increasingly available over high-speed internet connections. These services have reached a critical mass of availability, reliability, low price, and bandwidth that make them a viable option.
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Source: law.com
By: Josiah Q. Hamilton
Electronically stored information has transformed discovery and can quickly dwarf other costs of litigation. In e-discovery, in-house IT staff may find themselves working extra shifts to gather backup tapes from off-site storage; address custody-and-control issues; and obtain litigation support software to search e-mail, file servers, and backups.
But e-discovery is more familiar to most organizations than cloud computing. "Cloud computing" generally refers to a collection of technology and service offerings aimed at reducing or eliminating a company's need for in-house IT staff and resources by making similar resources available over the internet. Key business technology functions such as e-mail, file storage, and many applications -- together with staff to administrate and support them -- are increasingly available over high-speed internet connections. These services have reached a critical mass of availability, reliability, low price, and bandwidth that make them a viable option.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Josiah Q. Hamilton
What Can Happen When Lawyers Delegate Their e-Discovery Duties to a Client
A new opinion by the Chief Bankruptcy Judge in Manhattan, Arthur J. Gonzalez, illustrates what can happen when lawyers over-delegate to their client the lawyers’ duty to find and collect digital evidence. In re A & M Florida Properties II, LLC, 2010 WL 1418861 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Apr. 7, 2010). This case, and countless others just like it, remind me of the old phrase, let George do it. No, this has nothing to do with George Socha. I’m referring to a popular expression in the 1950s and 60s, one that I heard a lot in my family, where every other male was named George. Let George Do It was a popular radio show in the forties and fifties. It was about a detective named George Valentine where all of his clients came from reading a newspaper ad saying:
Personal notice: Danger’s my stock in trade. If the job’s too tough for you to handle, you’ve got a job for me. George Valentine.
This popular show led to the catch phrase, let George do it, meaning to let another person perform an odious task for you; kind of a slacker’s credo. That’s what appears to have happened in In re A & M Florida Properties II, LLC.
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Source: e-discoveryteam.com
By: Ralph Losey
Personal notice: Danger’s my stock in trade. If the job’s too tough for you to handle, you’ve got a job for me. George Valentine.
This popular show led to the catch phrase, let George do it, meaning to let another person perform an odious task for you; kind of a slacker’s credo. That’s what appears to have happened in In re A & M Florida Properties II, LLC.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: e-discoveryteam.com
By: Ralph Losey
Monday, April 19, 2010
New media becomes an increased focus of IT law
Recently passed laws covering information technology and trends in new media use are bringing a wide variety of work for attorneys who specialize in IT law.
Specialties can range from the electronic aspects of discovery in litigation to data security laws and identity theft and, particularly, employment and intellectual property law.
Employment law
New media, especially social media, is a growing practice area for IT lawyers as businesses grapple with new case law and professional rules of conduct.
Elizabeth Hardy, founding member and shareholder of Birmingham based Kienbaum Opperwall Hardy & Pelton plc, said social media, blog posts and mobile devices went from playing no role in any of her cases five years ago to being a factor in half or more of them today.
She juggles 25 or so cases at any time in her employment litigation practice, which focuses on discrimination, harassment and complex litigation, as well as some preventive counseling for management clients.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: crainsdetroit.com
By: Chad Halcom
Specialties can range from the electronic aspects of discovery in litigation to data security laws and identity theft and, particularly, employment and intellectual property law.
Employment law
New media, especially social media, is a growing practice area for IT lawyers as businesses grapple with new case law and professional rules of conduct.
Elizabeth Hardy, founding member and shareholder of Birmingham based Kienbaum Opperwall Hardy & Pelton plc, said social media, blog posts and mobile devices went from playing no role in any of her cases five years ago to being a factor in half or more of them today.
She juggles 25 or so cases at any time in her employment litigation practice, which focuses on discrimination, harassment and complex litigation, as well as some preventive counseling for management clients.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: crainsdetroit.com
By: Chad Halcom
Sunday, April 18, 2010
States' Rights Come to Security Forefront
Massachusetts' new data protection law reaches beyond its borders. Are you ready?
The new Massachusetts data security law, 201 CMR 17.00, is a prime example of the increasingly aggressive role states are taking to protect their citizens. More than 40 states have data breach notification laws already on the books--a trend that started with California's SB 1386 but certainly didn't end there. Much like those other laws, Massachusetts' has impact beyond the state's borders and could spur similar legislation in other states.
Federal action is also a distinct possibility.
If you hold personal information on a Massachusetts resident, you were on the hook as of March 1. The question for security groups is, How do we comply with the myriad state-mandated data security laws without putting an undue burden on the business? And comply you must, because CMR 17.00 raises the stakes in terms of potential penalties. The law will be enforced, quite literally, in the breach, and companies can potentially be fined $5,000 per violation and per record lost. One stolen laptop loaded with a database containing the names and Social Security numbers of 200 Massachusetts residents puts you in the hole for a cool million.
The Massachusetts law isn't remarkable in its overall requirements, but it is special in two areas. First, it requires businesses to attest that they have a working data security program in place to protect any personally identifiable information (PII) they've collected from state residents. Companies must maintain a comprehensive written information security program (WISP) that includes "technical, administrative, and physical safeguards" to protect PII. Covered businesses range from neighborhood dry cleaners to Fortune 100 companies, but the law stipulates that the program be appropriate to the size and resources of the business.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: informationweek.com
By: Randy George
The new Massachusetts data security law, 201 CMR 17.00, is a prime example of the increasingly aggressive role states are taking to protect their citizens. More than 40 states have data breach notification laws already on the books--a trend that started with California's SB 1386 but certainly didn't end there. Much like those other laws, Massachusetts' has impact beyond the state's borders and could spur similar legislation in other states.
Federal action is also a distinct possibility.
If you hold personal information on a Massachusetts resident, you were on the hook as of March 1. The question for security groups is, How do we comply with the myriad state-mandated data security laws without putting an undue burden on the business? And comply you must, because CMR 17.00 raises the stakes in terms of potential penalties. The law will be enforced, quite literally, in the breach, and companies can potentially be fined $5,000 per violation and per record lost. One stolen laptop loaded with a database containing the names and Social Security numbers of 200 Massachusetts residents puts you in the hole for a cool million.
The Massachusetts law isn't remarkable in its overall requirements, but it is special in two areas. First, it requires businesses to attest that they have a working data security program in place to protect any personally identifiable information (PII) they've collected from state residents. Companies must maintain a comprehensive written information security program (WISP) that includes "technical, administrative, and physical safeguards" to protect PII. Covered businesses range from neighborhood dry cleaners to Fortune 100 companies, but the law stipulates that the program be appropriate to the size and resources of the business.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: informationweek.com
By: Randy George
E-Discovery: How To Avoid Death By Backup
Backup tapes can kill an e-discovery effort with costs and complications. Fight back with smart policies and the right tools.
Many organizations are sitting on stockpiles of dangerous materials. No, we're not talking about hazardous chemicals or unstable explosives. We mean backup tapes, which are routinely included in requests to produce electronically stored information (ESI) as part of potential or ongoing litigation.
The e-discovery realm is rife with cautionary tales of organizations tripped up by backup tapes. For instance, in 2009 a judge fined a defendant more than $1 million for failing to retrieve information stored on backup tapes. In the same year, the government's Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight was compelled by a court to search its off-site disaster recovery backups for ESI, a search that ended up costing the agency $6 million--a jaw-dropping amount for a single discovery exercise. What's even scarier is that the agency wasn't even a party in the lawsuit; it had simply been subpoenaed for documents in litigation involving Fannie Mae.
This article examines the challenges that backup tapes pose. It also discusses strategies organizations can use to reduce the number of tapes that get stockpiled, and it outlines technologies and services that help reduce the cost and time it takes to retrieve ESI from tape.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: informationweek.com
By: Behzad Behtash
Many organizations are sitting on stockpiles of dangerous materials. No, we're not talking about hazardous chemicals or unstable explosives. We mean backup tapes, which are routinely included in requests to produce electronically stored information (ESI) as part of potential or ongoing litigation.
The e-discovery realm is rife with cautionary tales of organizations tripped up by backup tapes. For instance, in 2009 a judge fined a defendant more than $1 million for failing to retrieve information stored on backup tapes. In the same year, the government's Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight was compelled by a court to search its off-site disaster recovery backups for ESI, a search that ended up costing the agency $6 million--a jaw-dropping amount for a single discovery exercise. What's even scarier is that the agency wasn't even a party in the lawsuit; it had simply been subpoenaed for documents in litigation involving Fannie Mae.
This article examines the challenges that backup tapes pose. It also discusses strategies organizations can use to reduce the number of tapes that get stockpiled, and it outlines technologies and services that help reduce the cost and time it takes to retrieve ESI from tape.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: informationweek.com
By: Behzad Behtash
5 Musts For E-Discovery And Backup Tapes
Pull IT And Legal Teams Together--Now
E-discovery is a complex process that has intricate technological and legal requirements. That's why it's essential that your IT and legal teams coordinate their e-discovery efforts. For instance, IT may assume that legal wants every electronic file saved forever. It doesn't. Meantime, the legal department may assume that IT has some Google-like capability to magically produce relevant information. It doesn't. The sooner you move beyond these assumptions, the sooner these two groups can design and implement effective e-discovery processes.
Follow (And Enforce) Your Policies
When it comes to your organization's ability to find and produce electronically stored information, opposing counsel and court judges will probe for--and pounce on--operational practices that deviate from written policy. For example, if your policy is to overwrite backup tapes every two weeks, but in a deposition your storage manager says there are boxes and boxes of old tapes that were never overwritten, you can bet opposing counsel is going to ask for those tapes to be searched.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: informationweek.com
By: Behzad Behtash
E-discovery is a complex process that has intricate technological and legal requirements. That's why it's essential that your IT and legal teams coordinate their e-discovery efforts. For instance, IT may assume that legal wants every electronic file saved forever. It doesn't. Meantime, the legal department may assume that IT has some Google-like capability to magically produce relevant information. It doesn't. The sooner you move beyond these assumptions, the sooner these two groups can design and implement effective e-discovery processes.
Follow (And Enforce) Your Policies
When it comes to your organization's ability to find and produce electronically stored information, opposing counsel and court judges will probe for--and pounce on--operational practices that deviate from written policy. For example, if your policy is to overwrite backup tapes every two weeks, but in a deposition your storage manager says there are boxes and boxes of old tapes that were never overwritten, you can bet opposing counsel is going to ask for those tapes to be searched.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: informationweek.com
By: Behzad Behtash
Text Messaging Heads to the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court leaps today into the high-tech world of text messaging in a challenge with potentially huge implications for the privacy rights of senders and receivers and for workplace communications.
City of Ontario, Calif. v. Quon, one of two cases leading off the final round of oral arguments this term, is the Court's first foray into workplace monitoring of electronic and digital communications.
The city asks the justices whether a member of its police SWAT team had a Fourth Amendment "reasonable expectation of privacy" in text messages transmitted on his SWAT pager. The case also raises the issue of whether the senders of messages to the SWAT pager had their own reasonable expectation that the city would not review their messages.
"It's a new area. It's complicated, and the stakes are high given the shift in how people communicate," said Andrew Pincus, partner in the Washington office of Mayer Brown, who filed an amicus brief supporting the police officer, Jeff Quon, on behalf of civil liberties and consumer groups.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Marcia Coyle
City of Ontario, Calif. v. Quon, one of two cases leading off the final round of oral arguments this term, is the Court's first foray into workplace monitoring of electronic and digital communications.
The city asks the justices whether a member of its police SWAT team had a Fourth Amendment "reasonable expectation of privacy" in text messages transmitted on his SWAT pager. The case also raises the issue of whether the senders of messages to the SWAT pager had their own reasonable expectation that the city would not review their messages.
"It's a new area. It's complicated, and the stakes are high given the shift in how people communicate," said Andrew Pincus, partner in the Washington office of Mayer Brown, who filed an amicus brief supporting the police officer, Jeff Quon, on behalf of civil liberties and consumer groups.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Marcia Coyle
DOJ abandons warrantless attempt to read Yahoo e-mail
The U.S. Justice Department has abruptly abandoned what had become a high-profile court fight to read Yahoo users' e-mail messages without obtaining a search warrant first.
In a two-page brief filed Friday, the Obama administration withdrew its request for warrantless access to the complete contents of the Yahoo Mail accounts under investigation. CNET was the first to report on the Denver case in an article on Tuesday.
Yahoo's efforts to fend off federal prosecutors' broad request attracted allies--in the form of Google, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Progress and Freedom Foundation--who argued (PDF) that Americans who keep their e-mail in the cloud enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy that is protected by the U.S. Constitution.
Two years ago, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama had pledged that, as president, he would "strengthen privacy protections for the digital age." This dispute had the potential to test his administration's actual commitment to privacy, which recently became the subject of a legislative push supported by Silicon Valley firms and privacy advocates. The administration has taken a position at odds with that coalition in a second case in Philadelphia involving warrantless tracking of cell phones.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: news.cnet.com
By: Declan McCullagh
In a two-page brief filed Friday, the Obama administration withdrew its request for warrantless access to the complete contents of the Yahoo Mail accounts under investigation. CNET was the first to report on the Denver case in an article on Tuesday.
Yahoo's efforts to fend off federal prosecutors' broad request attracted allies--in the form of Google, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Progress and Freedom Foundation--who argued (PDF) that Americans who keep their e-mail in the cloud enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy that is protected by the U.S. Constitution.
Two years ago, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama had pledged that, as president, he would "strengthen privacy protections for the digital age." This dispute had the potential to test his administration's actual commitment to privacy, which recently became the subject of a legislative push supported by Silicon Valley firms and privacy advocates. The administration has taken a position at odds with that coalition in a second case in Philadelphia involving warrantless tracking of cell phones.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: news.cnet.com
By: Declan McCullagh
Friday, April 16, 2010
E-Discovery Threatens to 'Litigize' Arbitration
Most international commercial arbitrations avoid U.S.-style discovery. Depositions are rare and document discovery generally is limited by comparison to domestic arbitration proceedings.
Typically, parties produce documents they believe will support their claims or defenses. Document requests must be supported by a showing of need, together with a narrow description of the document and a statement that it is actually in the possession of the other party. In ruling on the scope of compelled document production, arbitrators are expected to balance the likely benefits of production against cost, delay, and the burden to the party who must produce.
International Bar Association rules do not mention e-discovery or refer to electronically stored information, but a number of commentators have argued that the governing principles of the IBA rules ought to apply not only to paper documents but also to electronically stored information. Currently, an IBA arbitration subcommittee is addressing potential changes to the 1999 Rules, and those changes could include e-discovery.
The International Centre for Dispute Resolution, the international arm of the American Arbitration Association, issued its "Guidelines for Information Exchanges in International Arbitration" in May 2008. The provision regarding electronic documents states: "Requests for documents maintained in electronic form should be narrowly focused and structured to make searching for them as economical as possible. The Tribunal may direct testing or other means of focusing and limiting any search."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Richard Chernick
Typically, parties produce documents they believe will support their claims or defenses. Document requests must be supported by a showing of need, together with a narrow description of the document and a statement that it is actually in the possession of the other party. In ruling on the scope of compelled document production, arbitrators are expected to balance the likely benefits of production against cost, delay, and the burden to the party who must produce.
International Bar Association rules do not mention e-discovery or refer to electronically stored information, but a number of commentators have argued that the governing principles of the IBA rules ought to apply not only to paper documents but also to electronically stored information. Currently, an IBA arbitration subcommittee is addressing potential changes to the 1999 Rules, and those changes could include e-discovery.
The International Centre for Dispute Resolution, the international arm of the American Arbitration Association, issued its "Guidelines for Information Exchanges in International Arbitration" in May 2008. The provision regarding electronic documents states: "Requests for documents maintained in electronic form should be narrowly focused and structured to make searching for them as economical as possible. The Tribunal may direct testing or other means of focusing and limiting any search."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Richard Chernick
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Where in the World is Your Cloud? Four Compliance Best Practice
If you think the phrase "It's in the cloud" means that your data resides on the Internet and is thus accessible everywhere equally, think again. Most infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud services share the same residence model as traditional hosting and outsourcing deployments — they live in specific data centers in specific geographies. This means that customer data is generated and most likely stored in this physical location, giving it legal and privacy implications.
Unfortunately, Forrester's conversations with end users and vendors suggest that many organizations simply aren't aware of where their cloud data centers reside. This lack of information can be quite risky when the location of the data center triggers a number of privacy and data security requirements that — if not met — may just land you in jail, facing a stiff fine, or at least navigating cumbersome compliance requirements. While cloud can be a catalyst for the IT-to-BT transformation, which I'll talk more about at next month's IT Forum, it can also be the most expensive project your company embarks on if you don't have a solid strategy in place first.
Security responsibility ultimately rests with you, the business — not the cloud provider. While most IaaS providers strive to secure their public data center cloud environment, they're not likely to take responsibility for data protection and compliance. In fact, they take no responsibility for what you do atop their virtualized infrastructures and services. Infrastructure and operations professionals should expect to have to carry this burden when partnering with a cloud provider.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: cio.com
By: James Staten
Unfortunately, Forrester's conversations with end users and vendors suggest that many organizations simply aren't aware of where their cloud data centers reside. This lack of information can be quite risky when the location of the data center triggers a number of privacy and data security requirements that — if not met — may just land you in jail, facing a stiff fine, or at least navigating cumbersome compliance requirements. While cloud can be a catalyst for the IT-to-BT transformation, which I'll talk more about at next month's IT Forum, it can also be the most expensive project your company embarks on if you don't have a solid strategy in place first.
Security responsibility ultimately rests with you, the business — not the cloud provider. While most IaaS providers strive to secure their public data center cloud environment, they're not likely to take responsibility for data protection and compliance. In fact, they take no responsibility for what you do atop their virtualized infrastructures and services. Infrastructure and operations professionals should expect to have to carry this burden when partnering with a cloud provider.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: cio.com
By: James Staten
Stop and Take a Look Under the EDD Hood
There are more than 600 companies offering e-discovery software and services, according to the most recent Socha Gelbmann survey of the electronic discovery market. If you spend any time trying to differentiate the hundreds of products and services being offered, you will find a wide variety of marketing claims being made about every product. But one fact about the e-discovery industry that most vendors probably prefer you didn't know is that many of the software products being offered are not very different once you start poking around inside.
Despite the proliferation of tools for reviewing large collections of electronic evidence, most vendors are simply licensing the same computer source code to build their products. These common components find, index, extract, and search digital documents, the core function of any e-discovery product. "What the industry doesn't want you to know is that, like the desktop PC industry, the same guts are inside the box," says Austin, Texas-based e-discovery consultant Craig Ball. "The rest is mostly branding and some bells and whistles. How much faster can one product really be over another when they use the same code?"
This does not necessarily mean that the e-discovery industry is populated with hundreds of identical products differentiated only by advertising. Some observers maintain that despite this common use and reuse of the same computer code, it is still possible to offer unique products. "Everyone needs to have building materials to work with. If I'm building a house, I need wood or bricks. If I'm building software, I need certain basic components," says George Socha, an attorney and e-discovery consultant in St. Paul, Minnesota. He also helps conduct the Socha Gelbmann survey. "Just because you use the same components doesn't mean they're all the same. There are different settings and different ways to implement these tools."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Jason Krause
Despite the proliferation of tools for reviewing large collections of electronic evidence, most vendors are simply licensing the same computer source code to build their products. These common components find, index, extract, and search digital documents, the core function of any e-discovery product. "What the industry doesn't want you to know is that, like the desktop PC industry, the same guts are inside the box," says Austin, Texas-based e-discovery consultant Craig Ball. "The rest is mostly branding and some bells and whistles. How much faster can one product really be over another when they use the same code?"
This does not necessarily mean that the e-discovery industry is populated with hundreds of identical products differentiated only by advertising. Some observers maintain that despite this common use and reuse of the same computer code, it is still possible to offer unique products. "Everyone needs to have building materials to work with. If I'm building a house, I need wood or bricks. If I'm building software, I need certain basic components," says George Socha, an attorney and e-discovery consultant in St. Paul, Minnesota. He also helps conduct the Socha Gelbmann survey. "Just because you use the same components doesn't mean they're all the same. There are different settings and different ways to implement these tools."
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: law.com
By: Jason Krause
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Data deluge is a legal time bomb
Archaic search technology has turned e-disclosure into a corporate nightmare.
During a hearing last December, the defence team for three former Nortel Networks executives argued that its clients weren’t getting a crack at a fair trial. But a biased jury isn’t what’s standing in the way of justice in this closely watched fraud case. Rather, the culprit is shoddy technology.
The problem is the nearly 23 million pages of electronically stored disclosure handed over by the Crown. According to the defence, the sheer amount of material — the paper equivalent of some 8,000 to 10,000 banker’s boxes — is so “staggering” that it cannot be effectively searched for information that may help its clients. In a February ruling, Ontario Superior Court Justice Cary Boswell agreed, referring to the material as a “document dump” and “unsearchable morass.” The Crown had until April 1 to “re-disclose” any relevant material.
Long gone are the days when a crackerjack legal team would spend weeks sifting through the material for a single shred of exculpatory evidence. These days, companies rely on search technology to slice and dice electronic documents like a Ginsu knife. But while Google is great for keeping tabs on your ex, modern-day search engines are turning out to be a poor match for today’s data deluge. In fact, recent research conducted by the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) Legal Track, an international workshop that assesses various information retrieval approaches, reveals that Boolean keyword searches found only between 22% and 57% of the total number of relevant documents.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
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Source: canadianbusiness.com
By: Cindy Waxer
During a hearing last December, the defence team for three former Nortel Networks executives argued that its clients weren’t getting a crack at a fair trial. But a biased jury isn’t what’s standing in the way of justice in this closely watched fraud case. Rather, the culprit is shoddy technology.
The problem is the nearly 23 million pages of electronically stored disclosure handed over by the Crown. According to the defence, the sheer amount of material — the paper equivalent of some 8,000 to 10,000 banker’s boxes — is so “staggering” that it cannot be effectively searched for information that may help its clients. In a February ruling, Ontario Superior Court Justice Cary Boswell agreed, referring to the material as a “document dump” and “unsearchable morass.” The Crown had until April 1 to “re-disclose” any relevant material.
Long gone are the days when a crackerjack legal team would spend weeks sifting through the material for a single shred of exculpatory evidence. These days, companies rely on search technology to slice and dice electronic documents like a Ginsu knife. But while Google is great for keeping tabs on your ex, modern-day search engines are turning out to be a poor match for today’s data deluge. In fact, recent research conducted by the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) Legal Track, an international workshop that assesses various information retrieval approaches, reveals that Boolean keyword searches found only between 22% and 57% of the total number of relevant documents.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
---------------------------------------------
Source: canadianbusiness.com
By: Cindy Waxer
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