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WHAT YOU NEED TO DO NOW - BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE
APlDLY GROWING DATA VOLUMES, CONSTANTLY CHANGING DATATYPES, evolving legal mandates and regulatory burdens have all greatly increased the c< kand burden of electronic discover)' (eDiscovery). As a result, many organizations are unable to appropriately respond to discovery requests in a timely manner. According ro a September 2008 report by the American College of Trial Lawyers, these burdens have forced many organizations to settle cases due to costs rather than merits.10
eDiscovery requirements are also having a negative impact on production IT systems, as litigation holds wreak havoc on document retention policies carefully designed to maintain high performance for production systems. Today's organizations need a better way to respond to modern eDiscovery requirements and minimize the risks of non-compliance. The answer is for organizations to proactively prepare themselves for litigation by following best practices and put in place automated solutions that simplify compliance with discovery requests.
But where do you start? The following are 10 best practices that organizations can follow to proactively prepare themselves for eDiscovery and litigation.
KNOW YOUR DATA - CREATE A DATA MAP
The ability of many organizations to comply with eDiscovery demands is compromised by their ever-growing volumes of electronic documents and by the fact that information is scattered across email, enterprise content management (ECM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), database and storage systems. The nature of this infrastructure significantly complicates the cost and effort to execute a search.
To prepare in a proactive manner, organizations need to create a map of where all their documents and data are stored before litigation occurs. This map should list the types and locations of all data and documents across the organization. To prepare this map, organizations should create an inventory of all of the organization's sources of data and documents, including content management systems, database systems, email systems, data repositories, etc. They must also create a map of the IT infrastructure that shows where the data stores are located.
For both the data sources and the IT infrastructure, organizations should understand:
* What is the data source? What does it do? What data does it store or use?
* Who is responsible for the data source? Who has access to that source?