Features - Enterprise Data Insights:
HAPHAZARD E-MAIL POLICIES PUT IT PROS IN THE HOT SEAT
By Debbie Moffat
Many companies have effective and reliable policies in place for paper
records, but they may have a false sense of confidence that their information
technology systems reliably retain and manage e-mail records. Newspaper
headlines are replete with warning signs about haphazard e-mail management.
One only has to bring to mind the well-known Microsoft and "fen-phen"
investigations, or look closely at lesser-known cases like those involving
Prudential Insurance, Oracle or Gillette to acquire a foreboding sense that
e-mail is a smoking gun for litigation attorneys in the digital information
age.
IT Faces The Brunt Of Information Discovery
When a company faces a lawsuit, the Information Technology (IT) department
finds itself faced with the brunt of information discovery. For beleaguered
technology pros, nothing seems to present a more daunting challenge than
e-mail management. IT managers find that e-mail records clog their networks
and storage farms and demand increasing hours of administrative support.
The expense and risk associated with e-mail during litigation are not commonly
understood or appreciated. A survey by the American Bar Association in May of
2000 found that more than 80 percent of the companies they surveyed did not
have a policy on how they would handle e-mail discovery requests.
Consequently, when a court order for corporate e-mail is handed down
compliance is likely to be an economic and operational nightmare, if not
downright impossible. One company had its e-mail archives subpoenaed and had
to retrieve 400 backup tapes covering an 18-month period. Searching the
related e-mail records took hundreds of hours and cost the company over two
hundred thousand dollars.
E-mail represents a growing and elusive risk during litigation because it
constitutes a "corporate memory" of how an organization conducts itself.
E-mail is a pervasive trail of evidence that demonstrates corporate decisions
and behavior -- digital testimony to an organization's functions, activities,
and transactions. E-mail can often show with a high degree of reliability who
said and knew what. Sifting through corporate e-mail is a litigator's primary
weapon in the search to uncover a needle in a haystack.
IT In The Hot Seat
E-mail management can be an area of conflict between IT professionals,
corporate counsel, business area leaders, and records management specialists.
The traditional charter of IT departments is to preserve data at all costs
unless instructed otherwise. The conflict becomes a concern when corporate
attorneys want to minimize exposure to "risky data," while business unit
leaders may cry, "Don't leave us unprotected!" Records management specialists
enter the fray, concerned not only with e-mail content, but also with the life
cycle of information -- when to retire data, and when to retain it (and for
how long) in order to comply with various regulatory constraints. Ultimately,
IT administrators get caught in the crossfire.
Despite these conflicting priorities, companies must rely on the IT group to
find and retrieve e-mail records in order to comply with a discovery mandate
from the court. But if IT folks are not aware that their company is involved
in a lawsuit, or a court order does not get to the right members of the IT
department quickly as needed, the lack of coordination can result in serious
consequences. Once litigation is pending, data cannot be deleted or destroyed
without risk of severe penalty. Often unaware, IT administrators who struggle
to save storage space and mitigate administration costs, may continue to
delete e-mail and unwittingly expose the company to legal penalties and an
unfavorable perception in the eyes of the court.
It is unrealistic to assume that IT professionals can pay attention to all the
nuances of litigation, manage the life cycle responsibilities associated with
e-mail, and enforce an overall e-mail archive policy. The stakes are high. For
example, a company operating in all 50 states could face as many as 2,500
potentially relevant laws affecting electronic records within their
organization. Organizations must weigh the value of each e-mail message
against the potential risk that it could be used against them in court and
then build technology systems to enable their chosen strategy.
The Solution -- Policy And Technology
Very few corporate systems are set up to handle e-mail retention properly.
Widely used software products, like Lotus Notes and MS Exchange, do not
provide adequate records retention modules. Venders such as EDUCOM can provide
significant enhancements to standard corporate e-mail systems using MS
Exchange. For example, EDUCOM's products help to mitigate litigation risk by
enabling a centralized message archive with centralized administration. In
this way administrators, executives, and attorneys can quickly understand
where all of their corporate e-mail is located, what it says, and the
potential risks posed during litigation.
Author's Bio
Debbie Moffat is the Managing Director with EDUCOM TS Inc and a twenty-three
year IT veteran. Educom specializes in information technology, process
improvement and litigation risk and is an industry leader in the development
of software solutions focused on the mission-critical management of corporate
e-mail. EDUCOM products help clients establish e-mail retention policies,
protect corporate intellectual property, increase speed of information
retrieval, and reduce costly e-mail server overload. EDUCOM's flagship product
is Exchange Archive Solution (EAS), offering intelligent storage management
for Microsoft Exchange mail stores.
To learn more about EDUCOM TS Inc or the subject of e-mail management visit
www.educomts.com.
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