eDiscovery - for on-premises data and SaaS application data too

Discovery, also known as eDiscovery (electronic discovery), is an essential part of any compliance plan. By the time a discovery request arrives due to litigation or an audit, it’s already too late to implement a discovery and compliance solution. You need to have it in place in advance to protect your organization.

In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court changed the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) to explicitly include electronically-stored information – files, email messages, chat messages, etc. – as part of the requirements for the discovery process. Failure to comply with any regulations related to discovery can result in huge fines and legal expenses. Many companies have learned this lesson the hard way.

What does this mean for your organization? In the event of a discovery request, you need to be prepared to produce any relevant files and information. These could be text files, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, Excel workbooks, etc. The information may exist in your customer relationship management (CRM) platform, email messages, and group or one-on-one chat messages. Data stored in SaaS solutions like Microsoft 365 and Salesforce is subject to discovery.

SaaS applications have become ubiquitous in the business environment. But too often, organizations overlook this data when preparing a discovery response.

Legal discovery has eight defined phases:

Identification
Preservation
Collection
Processing
Review
Analysis
Production
Presentation

Phases 1 through 3 are the responsibility of the Compliance Office. IT usually assists by implementing a solution that ensures compliance and simplifies the discovery process. Phases 4 through 8 are the responsibility of the Legal department or outside legal counsel. Most of the work – Phases 1 through 6 – happens before any information is handed over in Phase 7.

Arctera Data Compliance is the optimal way to ensure that all your SaaS application data is in compliance with any regulations. And it ensures that the discovery process is quick and easy. Features including immutable storage, data retention policies, and data location controls help to automate compliance enforcement. Advanced search, the ability to build cases and apply legal holds, and ease of exporting all data associated with a request – and only that data – all make responding to calls for discovery quick and simple.

Remember, the less time it takes to compile information for discovery, the fewer billable hours you’ll have to pay for legal services.

Arctera Data Compliance captures the industry’s broadest sent of communications platforms and content source including SaaS applications like Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and Slack. Because it unifies all communications at the source into a single archive repository, you don’t need to perform separate discovery actions for each application. You can use a single unified management console to run the required searches simultaneously across all your SaaS application data.

Learn more in our eDiscovery solution brief. Or contact us to set up a discussion or a demo of our discovery capabilities.