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Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) require that companies be able to speak intelligently about the state of their Electronically Stored Information (ESI). They don't come right out and say how to do it. But they do require that, in the event of a lawsuit, ESI be retrieved in a timely manner during eDiscovery. While these rules have been in place for a couple of years, some organizations are just now coming to grips with managing their information infrastructure. It's a pretty daunting challenge. Information continues to grow every day, so there is the need to address the problem today, if not yesterday.
As a first step toward preparing for eDiscovery, CA recommends that our customers start by creating a Data Map. While it may seem obvious, in practice it is not so easy. The data can be literally all over the map. Just a few of the things that make the data map challenging:
- Not knowing what hardware you have across the enterprise. Only once you do can you inventory what Information is there.
- What applications are in use (or no longer in use) like email, document management systems, file share systems and the like.
- Many organizations were created by M&A. The challenge here is that there can be a lot of vitally important content that may not have been documented prior to an acquisition.
- Different locations present their own set of challenges due to ownership and geographical distance.
- Related to emails are .PST files. Have you told your employees they have a limit on the size of their email box? No problem, they'll create PST files, full of risky, proprietary corporate information and keep it on their PC, backed up on a drive at home, or on a flash stick. Who knows what they'll do? A lot of organizations don't.
- Backup systems.
In addition to knowing what information the organization has, there should be the following accompanying information for each type.
- Who uses the information
- The native format
- The retention schedules
- Backup status of the information
Creating the data map will not be easy, and it will take time and resources to create it. But look at it this way: It is virtually impossible to be responsive to the timeframe required by the FRCP without first having a data map. Do it now while you can take your time doing it, because otherwise it could be too late.