IT Department Takes on Critical e-Discovery Role

After years of minimal involvement in ediscovery, IT is increasingly responsible for the critical data management and collections phases of ediscovery. This article follows up on our previous discussion of ediscovery, "Sea Changes for IT and Ediscovery" Here, we will look at the three driving factors in this change, as well as the place email archives and backup now occupy in meeting new ediscovery responsibilities.

Three Driving Factors for Fast-Growing Data

Fast data growth is a fact of life in private and public sectors. Storage administrators work to manage storage across complex infrastructure, including primary storage, nearline/archival storage, disk-based protection tiers, tape libraries, off-site mirrored storage systems, and individual desktops and laptops.

This is challenging enough simply for managing backup and archive, and ediscovery adds a whole different twist. The bad news as far as ediscovery goes is that 1) these fast-growing data stores house data must be discovered for litigation and compliance, 2) IT must control this data for retention as well as for cost-effective storage management, and 3) each storage type may have dozens or hundreds of storage targets and components, making each sub-environment a discovery challenge all by itself.

IT has been understandably reluctant to take on the ediscovery process in these complex storage environments, but there is no avoiding it anymore. The risk of poor ediscovery is too high. Attorneys understand collection and preservation in a legal sense, but only IT is positioned to provide search access and preservation in complex storage environments.

1. Faster and Wider Collections

Companies used to plead "undue burden" when a collection promised to be time-consuming and expensive. Judges often granted the request if the expense of a search was disproportionate to the matter. The principle of proportionality remains important, but judges are looking at the reasons behind undue burden motions. If the reason for the motion is poorly managed data storage, then the judge is likely to deny it and simply direct the company to bear the cost.

To Continue Reading: Click Here

----------------------------------------------
Source: enterprisestorageforum.com
By: Christine Taylor