E-Discovery Forecast: Cloud-y with a chance of fog?
Published:
June 29 2009, 08:25 AM
by
Greg Clark
I read a posting on the ARMA website (
E-Discovery in the Cloud = Fog?) last week that discussed some of the challenges eDiscovery in the cloud presents and found it very timely with some recent announcements in the email archiving market. We all understand the benefits of services in the cloud "“ it is highly accessible, inexpensive (since you don't need to shell out for servers, and software), low or no maintenance and capital expenditures remain in check.
The article raises interesting questions when this paradigm is applied to the delivery of electronic discovery services. For example:
- What formats are available for production?
- How are litigation holds established, enforced, and audited?
- How is privileged information protected from unauthorized disclosure?
- Who owns the risk for ESI spoliation if something is accidently deleted or purged from a server out in the cloud?
If the search capabilities are not sufficient from the service provider will other 3rd party tools be capable of accessing the data in the cloud?
- Can data stored on physical servers in a foreign country lead to jurisdictional issues? If so, can this hinder or limit your ability to produce information across borders?
The benefits of cloud computing are clear and they are not going away. But one should not blindly go into the cloud without asking how access, preservation and production along with chain of custody are established, tracked and controlled in these solutions "“ oh, and if something unexpected does happen, what are the terms of service?
By: Greg Clark
Greg Clark is a Senior Principle Product Manager for Information Governance at CA, Inc. Greg has worked for the last 10 years in various roles within marketing and product management in both Enterprise Content Management and the Information Governance space. Since joining CA in 2007, Greg has been responsible...
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