Entries categorized under “Information Management”

Over the last few years I thought I had seen just about every (well, maybe not every but most) automated eDiscovery, data classification, data management, data preservation and search engine technology on the market. But the introduction of today's Data Insight technology from Symantec into Data Loss Protection (DLP) software seeks to address possibly one of the most basic data classification questions of them all: Who owns the data? (read more)

Last week's blog took a look at the 10 most read blogs in 2009 that were written in 2009. This week I wanted to step even further back and reflect upon the top 10 most read blogs in 2009 regardless of when they were written as I find this insightful in two ways. It lets me know what information continues to hold the attention of readers on as well as what topics from the past might become new trends in 2010. So while there is definitely some overlap between the two, there are also some entries that appear on this list that knock some of the top 10 blogs from last week off the list. (read more)

The issue of attorney-client privilege remains one of the most revered privileges that the American judicial system bestows upon clients as it enables any person to communicate open and honestly with his/her attorney. Now this right is under scrutiny as keeping communications between a defendant and his/her attorney has become difficult to achieve due to the increased role that email plays as a form of primary communication medium between them. (read more)

IT's role in the enterprise has changed dramatically in just the last few years - most notably in its responsibilities and workloads. No longer is it enough for IT to manage data protection recovery, networks, systems, and storage, but its responsibilities have expanded as it has merged with other operational and strategic business functions. This is forcing IT to develop a holistic understanding of the needs of the entire organization to ensure that the technology it deploys meets those needs as well as aligns with the larger company strategy. (read more)

Organizations across the United States have steadily felt the sting of legal action involving eDisocovery as they are quickly discovering that it is no easy feat to comply with mandates such as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP). This is resulting in mounting sanctions and a steadily decreasing patience in courts towards eDiscovery mistakes. However state and local government agencies were conspicuously absent from this steady stream of eDiscovery rulings. (read more)

No company regardless of its size is immune from the possibility of an eDiscovery. But even as companies look to respond to eDiscovery demands placed on them by rulings such as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), an equally vexing problem that they face is making sense of their growing mountain of email data. (read more)

I recently had an interesting conversation with an IT Director who is currently working in health care. We were discussing how his job has evolved with the complexity associated with EMR (electronic medical record) systems and how IT in health care has been especially burdened. Beyond just playing technology catch up, there are numerous regulatory and litigation threats now hovering over it. He specifically pointed to litigation as one area that represents a growing risk to his company's business and how responding to eDiscovery requests for electronic information has become a huge burden. (read more)

Smart managers always put a large emphasis on automating whatever processes they can within their organizations and for good reasons: processes become more predictable, there is a reduced chance of human error and ultimately the business is more successful. However businesses are finding out that it may not be in their best interest to automate data classification and that for now courts still prefer people to computers when it comes to performing this particular task. (read more)

DCIG has consistently stressed the need for good eDiscovery processes for electronically stored information (ESI). A steady stream of sanctions surrounding poor eDiscovery strategies is a consistent reminder that a lack of planning can be damaging to your case. A recent case, Ferron v. EchoStar Satellite, LLC., in one such reminder that images and links in emails can be subject to eDiscovery and that the failure to preserve them could be costly. (read more)

A recent report from Ferris Research estimates that the total number of business e-mails sent in North America alone will surpass 139 million in 2009 and 143 million in 2010. This volume of email growth continues to put pressure on IT staff in every size organization to manage its inflow, outflow and retention. While the mechanics of managing emails inflows and outflows can be fairly straightforward, when it comes to setting policies as to how long to retain these emails, the picture can start to get a bit hazy. (read more)

"There is no truth if you cannot find relevant evidence and, unless companies get their eDiscovery act together, eDiscovery is about to destroy the American System of Justice as we know it." That statement summarizes the opening remarks that Ralph Losey, the noted eDiscovery attorney of FloridaLawFirm.com, made during a recent presentation. From there, he went on to explain why he believes most organizations - public or private, large or small - have no viable strategy for eDiscovery and why a reactive approach to eDiscovery is putting the viability of the American System of Justice as we know it at risk. (read more)

Obama's administration allocated $17B of the recent (Feb 09) stimulus spending package to healthcare, for the purpose of building better healthcare infrastructure. The goal of the new infrastructure is to move patient records online and enable a ubiquitous Electronic Health Record (EHR) to be shared universally among hospital systems. Obama himself promised a total of $50B in spending for this purpose during his campaign. Some experts believe that even more is to come. But, now that some of the money is allocated, how are healthcare institutions getting access to it and what are they doing with it? (read more)

In 1978 the Presidential Records Act (PRA) was passed which fundamentally changed the landscape of Presidential records by moving them from a classification of personal information to the public domain. The PRA is explicit in describing that retention of records created by the President of the United States as well as the Vice President is the responsibility of the President. The PRA guides the President in how records should be handled and guides the steps in the proper destruction of records and how they are retained to comply with this federal statute. (read more)

Matt Kesner, the CTO of Fenwick and West and who runs the computer forensics group within that firm, even goes so far to say in a recent Symantec eDiscovery virtual round table that organizations who use social networking have lost control and it can seem sort of hopeless to get your arms around this new form of electronically stored content. But what is happening in response to this new wave of social networking is that some organizations are making employees responsible for the content they create on these Web 2.0 sites and instructing them to act as their own records managers. (read more)

A just released March 2009 Nielsen Company report, Global Faces and Networked Places, makes some startling observations about the rapid adoption of social networking such as blogs, social media sites (Facebook), Twitter and wikis among Internet users. While many may intuitively suspect that the adoption rate of these forms of social networking is accelerating, this report removes all doubt. It highlights that two-thirds of the world's Internet population now utilize social media sites, traffic to these sites is growing at 3x the rate of other Internet traffic and people now spend 10% of all Internet time on social networking sites. (read more)

A recent virtual eDiscovery roundtable that I participated in highlighted the difficulties that companies are having in getting their arms around the proliferation of electronically stored information (ESI) in their organization. This is especially true when one considers the growth of social media and how it can negatively impact them going forward. One attorney participating in the roundtable even went so far to say that, "We have lost control in regards to blogs, wikis and newer forms of social media." Thankfully the news is a little bit better in regards to the management of older, more mature forms of social media such as email but challenges still remain. (read more)

I had a friendly, yet disturbing, conversation with an acquaintance who happens to be a local bankruptcy attorney and trustee. (Boy, how his world has changed recently.) We started off just catching up (my business - not so good; his business - unfortunately very good). The conversation then moved to a local bank that had recently been shut down by the FDIC, and how the ramifications of its failure are being felt by individuals and businesses. (read more)

Over the past year there has been a lot of talk and speculation about Electronic Health Records (EHR). The topic started making headlines last year as President Obama and Senator McCain sparred over how to best fix health care with EHR touted as the single best way to control the ever increasing costs of medical treatment. Although it remains to be seen if this is actually the case, the recent stimulus bill passed by Congress on February 13th, 2009, has ensured EHR projects will be funded. (read more)

Over the last few months DCIG has spent fair amount of time researching and documenting specific reasons why tape will not die. Green IT is the one reason we most often hear cited for retaining tape, though new disk-based deduplication and replication technologies coupled with new disk storage system designs that are based on grid storage architectures can offset some of those concerns. So before organizations think that after 30, 90 or 180 days that they should immediately move their archival and backup data, deduplicated or otherwise, from disk to tape just to save money, there are certain intangible savings from an eDiscovery perspective that keeping data on disk provides that are not always feasible on tape. (read more)

If you have followed the news lately it would appear that the media and President Obama feel the economy is firmly entrenched somewhere between disaster and Armageddon, which has framed much of the debate surrounding the stimulus bills that are in both houses of Congress. When the Senate passed their version of the bill on February 9th, it promised $838 Billon dollars for spending projects designed to jump start the economy. But like most things in government there is a lot more in the details than the headlines. Now that the stimulus bill is out in the open, DCIG has a more clear view of where health care regulation is going and how IT will be affected. (read more)

A recent DCIG blog entry called into question the value of Bear Stearns selection of Orchestria and its inability to detect the alleged illegal activities of two of its Asset Management portfolio managers. More specifically, it asked why Orchestria did not detect the illegal activities of these individuals and why Bear Stearns did not configure it to monitor for these activities in the first place. The blog posting prompted a comment and phone call from Alan Morley, one of the individuals formerly responsible for implementing and managing Orchestria at Bear Stearns and why monitoring, detecting and preventing this activity is not as easy as it sounds. (read more)

Recently, I had a passing conversation with an attorney about FRCP and as we were talking, he kept bringing up areas that concerned him. So I asked him, "What is your biggest eDiscovery concern?" Without hesitation he replied, "Having a judge issue 'Death Instructions'." (read more)

The recent announcement that CA acquired Orchestria to extend its identity and access management portfolio to include data loss prevention raises some key questions about exactly what problems CA hopes to solve. While DCIG sees the value in companies acquiring and merging with other companies to solve specific strategic problems, this one left us scratching our heads a bit. After all, wasn't it Bear Stearns who back in 2005 selected Orchestria to oversee its electronic communications? But now, in the light of day, really how much benefit did its implementation of Orchestria provide Bear Stearns in light of its recent public failure? (read more)

In this first part of a two-part interview series with Permabit's CEO Tom Cook, DCIG analyst Jerome Wendt discusses with Tom how organizations are focusing more on storage system fundamentals and why they are so important at this time. Jerome also gets Tom's take on how organizations should prepare for the new regulations coming out of Congress as well as how the emergence of Tier 0 (SSD) and enterprise archival storage systems will start to put a squeeze on primary storage systems in 2009. (read more)

Today's release of CommVault Simpana 8 continues to reflect CommVault's commitment to deliver enterprise data protection and management using a single product with multiple application modules. Yet it is Simpana 8's new global block-based data deduplication feature and new ability to deduplicate data stored to tape that is likely to raise excitement. Making these features integral to Simpana 8, CommVault does more than just give enterprises another deduplication option or simply lower tape costs. Instead it starts to put CommVault on a collision course with deduplicating storage appliances and even traditional tape devices while giving organizations new reason to ponder their longer term deduplication strategy. (read more)