Electronic Discovery & Computer Forensics : RenewData : Austin, Texas

APC Filtration (“APC”) moved the U.S. District Court for Northern District of Illinois to issue sanctions against a former employee, William Becker and his new employer SourceOne in APC Filtration Inc. v. Becker, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76221 (N.D.Ill. Oct. 12, 2007).

APC had initially brought suit against Becker for alleged misappropriation of confidential information and diversion of corporate opportunities. In discovery, APC requested Becker’s personal computer because of admitted communications between Becker and one of APC’s major customers and a major supplier. Becker and SourceOne claimed any communications using that computer were irretrievably lost because Becker’s personal computer had “crashed.” The court required further explanation from Becker. In an affidavit, Becker stated that he had experienced computer problems on March 21, 2007, and that he had brought his computer to a repair shop where he was told that “the mother board and hard drive were shot, and that the computer was not worth fixing.” Therefore, Becker threw it away with “other junk.” However, in his July 24, 2007 deposition, Becker testified that he took the computer to a construction site in McHenry, Illinois, and disposed of it in a dumpster. He admitted this dumpster was approximately 20 miles away from his home.

The court held that the computer was discoverable and Becker and SourceOne had reasonable notice that the computer could become the subject of discovery requests when Becker threw the computer away, some time after March 21, 2007. APC's complaint was filed on March 15, 2007, and counsel for Defendants made his initial appearance on March 19, 2007. Therefore Becker had “reasonable notice” when he disposed of his computer that the computer “could become part of the discovery process” and “had the duty to preserve the computer as evidence prior to the date on which he discarded it.”

The court further held that by disposing of the computer within days of receiving notice of the lawsuit, Becker had acted in bad faith to prevent APC from discovering potentially damaging evidence.

Furthermore, the destruction of the computer impaired APC’s ability to present proof in its diversion claims that Becker had communicated with its customer and supplier. However, because APC had other means of proving its misappropriation of information claims, prejudice from destruction of the computer was less significant. Nevertheless, the conduct warranted sanctions and the court held that certain communications between Becker and the employer’s customer and its supplier were deemed “conclusively proven,” and Becker and SourceOne were required to pay APC’s costs and attorney’s fees in connection with “a) filing and arguing this motion for sanctions; b) third-party discovery that was made necessary by Becker’s destruction of the computer; and c) retaining [a] computer expert.”

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Magistrate Judge Facciola rules for preservation and limited inspection of cell phone images in response to a motion to compel in Smith v. Café Asia, 2007 WL 2849579 (D.D.C.) As background, plaintiff, Andrei Smith, was formerly employed as a host and waiter at Cafe Asia, a restaurant located in Washington, D.C. The restaurant owned by defendant is located at 1720 Eye Street DC Hospitality, LLC ("Cafe Asia"). Plaintiff claimed he was the victim of discrimination based on his sexual orientation, in violation of the District of Columbia Human Rights Act and that he was the subject of assault and battery in the form of unwanted touching. Specifically, plaintiff alleged that:

(1) the kitchen staff routinely verbally taunted him based on his sexual orientation;

(2) the kitchen staff repeatedly subjected him to humiliating physical harassment;

(3) the management tolerated and encouraged this verbal and physical harassment; and

(4) Ms. Joey Yim, one of the managers, sent him an email containing six pornographic images portraying homosexual sex acts (the "Yim e-mail").

This discovery dispute focuses on defendant's request that it be permitted to inspect and make copies of images stored on plaintiff's cell phone. Defendant alleged that these images portray:

(1) plaintiff's genitalia at various states of arousal; and

(2) graphic images of other men purported to be plaintiff's sexual partners

Plaintiff concedes that his cell phone contains "intimate, highly personal" and "unclothed images," but denies having willingly shared the images with his co-workers. 

Defendant asserted that even if the images where not admissible at trial, they were discoverable. The court, however, observed that this is true only if the images led to other discoverable evidence. Here, since the defendant sought to use the graphic content of the images to establish plaintiff's own standards of behavior, the images themselves are the “end game” of the discovery request. Therefore, the ultimate issue was whether the images would be admissible at trial. Specifically, the court stated that a determination of whether the probative value of the images outweighed their prejudice was required under F.R.E. 403 and 412(b)(2).  Because this determination was best made by the trial judge, the court ordered the images to be preserved.

Judge Facciola also noted that the “analysis differs where the discovery is sought by defendant to corroborate the testimony of its witnesses that plaintiff willingly shared the images,” as plaintiff had denied sharing the images with co-workers. Although F.R.C.P. 26(b)(1) usually allows production of any matter relevant to the subject matter of the litigation, plaintiff argued that F.R.E. 412 required that defendant must establish that the probative value outweighed prejudice to plaintiff. The court found that it had “the discretion under Rule 26 to balance defendant’s need for the images against plaintiff’s valid privacy concerns.” Thus, in addition to ordering the preservation of the images, the court also ordered that one defense attorney be allowed to inspect the images, “only so far as necessary to fully inform its discovery and trial preparation.”

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On September 27, 2007, The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced a settlement with Morgan Stanley & Co. to resolve charges that the firm's former affiliate, Morgan Stanley DW, Inc. (MSDW), failed on numerous occasions to provide emails to claimants in arbitration proceedings as well as to regulators - while representing that the destruction of the firm's email servers in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center resulted in the loss of all pre-9/11 email. In fact, the firm had millions of pre-9/11 emails that had been restored to the firm's active email system using back-up tapes that had been stored in another location.

The settlement provides for distribution of $9.5 million to two groups of customers who had arbitration claims against the firm. FINRA also imposed a $3 million fine on the firm for its failure to provide pre-9/11 emails and updates to a supervisory manual.

“The integrity of our process demands that brokerage firms comply with their obligations to search diligently for, and provide in a timely way, information and documents required in arbitration proceedings and regulatory investigations," said Susan Merrill, FINRA Executive Vice President and Chief of Enforcement." The action announced today underscores FINRA's commitment to ensuring that firms live up to those obligations. We are particularly pleased that this unique settlement directs the bulk of the monetary sanction to the customers in arbitrations, to remedy MSDW's discovery failures."

FINRA found that MSDW failed to provide pre-9/11 emails to claimants in numerous arbitration proceedings and in response to three regulatory inquiries during the period from October 2001 through March 2005. MSDW made statements in numerous arbitration proceedings and to the former NASD, New York Stock Exchange Regulation and the Massachusetts Securities Division that those emails had been destroyed. Those statements were found not to be true. In fact, MSDW possessed millions of pre-9/11 emails that had been restored to the firm's system shortly after Sept.11, 2001 using backup tapes. Many other emails were maintained on individual users' computers and had not been affected by the events of 9/11. Among the matters where MSDW failed to produce e-mail was an NASD investigation that resulted in an August 2005 settlement with the firm.

FINRA also found that MSDW later destroyed many of the pre-9/11 emails it did possess. The firm did so in two ways - by overwriting backup tapes that had been used to restore the emails from 11 of its 12 servers to the firm's system, and by allowing users of the firm's email system to permanently delete the emails over an extended period of time. As a result, between September 2001 and March 2005, MSDW deleted millions of pre-9/11 emails from the firm's systems.

In settling this matter, Morgan Stanley neither admitted nor denied the charges, but consented to the entry of FINRA's findings.

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An effective e-discovery policy is no longer just a nice-to-have. New FRCP rules mean that companies now need to know more about the information contained within their electronic documents than ever – or face the consequences.

Business Management speaks to four leading e-discovery experts – Xerox’s Craig Freeman, RenewData’s Ellery Buchanan, Plasmon’s Mike Koclanes and CA’s Galina Datskovsky – to get their opinions.

95 percent of all business communications now are created and stored electronically. Most major corporations today hold more than 3TBs of user data and messages. Trends also indicate this mass of data will grow by double digits year upon year. In terms of e-discovery, what challenges does this data explosion present?

CF. As volumes of corporate data continue to explode, the challenges of managing and processing that data continue to grow as well. First, you cannot overwhelm your review team with mountains of documents collected during discovery. Pinpointing relevant data and culling out extraneous documents during the pre-processing step is key. Then there is the ever-growing variety of file types involved in daily business activities. Processing this information accurately and completely is a firm requirement in the defensibility of the steps you take to defend your case. You will need systems and services that are capable of handling these large volumes and process them at a speed that can meet the court deadlines that are imposed.

GD. It presents several challenges. First, looking for specific, relevant data in a vast collection of this size can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. It can take a long time, involve many resources, and it is difficult to guarantee that all relevant information has indeed been produced. Size of collection is only the beginning. It is also difficult to guarantee chain of custody as well as preservation. Controlling the vast array of information by applying the necessary controls is a daunting task. For most organizations, the biggest challenge is how to gain mastery of the multitude of data sources that they invariably have.

EB. The e-discovery process has both technical and human elements. While it is possible to increase the scalability of software and hardware (as evidenced by the fact that RenewData processed over 18 petabytes of data in 2006), the human element is not as easily scalable. Enter technology. There are methods of reducing the volume of data before any human review takes place. RenewData’s ActiveVault Evidence Management Platform extracts and dynamically de-duplicates data – reducing the amount of data that will be ingested into a review tool, and ensuring reviewers will not waste time reviewing 20 copies of the same e-mail or document. Today’s technology allows reviewers to review data that has been run through semantic analysis and grouped in physical clusters, enabling them to review thousands of documents per day.

MK. An archive strategy to effectively store large volumes of electronic data and enable e-discovery is becoming a business imperative. Requirements for e-discovery have been driven by litigation, industry regulation, and corporate governance and necessitate that archived content is searchable, accessible, and authentic. ESG estimates that 80 percent of information being archived today is unstructured and semi-structured data. Using tape backups as the primary archive is no longer a viable strategy as tapes are not manageable for e-discovery. Maintaining unchanged files, e-mails and documents on high availability disk is costly and still requires backups as all disk arrays have high potential for failure and lack data permanence. E-discovery requires an archive-specific platform that has the access and search capability of disk, the low cost and power requirements of tape, as well as long term permanence and immutability.

It’s been over six months since new federal e-discovery rules took effect in the US, yet some businesses are still unclear on what they have to do to comply. How big a problem is this, and what steps should companies take to ensure they are compliant?

GD. Unfortunately, there is no technological silver bullet that can resolve all the issues. In fact, a solution involves both human and technological investment. It is imperative to form a task force with representatives from IT, legal, records management and compliance. It is also critical to have support from the executive management. The task force will help drive technology decisions, such as records management, e-mail archiving and e-discovery, but most importantly, the task force will create best practices, policies and procedures to be followed by all employees, including training programs for the staff and organizational awareness plans that together will promote proactive and consistent management of information assets. The consistent management, retention and disposition of information assets, as legally appropriate, prior to a litigation event will make discovery that much simpler and less costly.

MK. Any business that can be impacted by a civil lawsuit must now develop and document corporate processes for electronic record discovery and legal hold management. In the past, companies assumed if they were not held to regulations such as SEC 17-a or HIPPA, they did not have an e-discovery or compliance problem. This is clearly no longer the case. You should first consult with your legal advisor, compliance officer and your IT organization to understand your exposure and assess your archive strategy and your current practices and policies for e-discovery, data classification, legal hold, and retention processing of critical files and messages.

CF. Weeding through the new compliance rules and federal rules of civil procedure is a major challenge for corporations. It starts with records management within the company and with a data retention policy that must be in place prior to litigation. But once discovery starts, then the steps to collect and process the data must be bullet proof. Companies must be able to provide an audit trail of what documents were involved in discovery, how those documents were handled – processed and reviewed – and to be able to prove the documents were unaltered during this time. The solutions you use to complete each of the electronic document processing, document review, and production steps must be able to provide the audit trails you need to defend your actions.

EB. The first thing a corporation must do is to evaluate its current document retention policy for accuracy and adherence. Overly complex or rigid plans can give opposing parties the opportunity to show that the plan is not being followed. If there is no document retention plan in place, one must be created immediately, with periodic training of employees on the retention policies to ensure compliance. Next, a corporation should assess and map its IT infrastructure and capabilities by interviewing those in the general counsel’s office and outside counsel to determine what information they will need. Third, assemble a records management response team that will be responsible for responding to any emergency or litigation with respect to the corporation’s records. Finally, develop a protocol for storing and reusing discovery data from prior cases. This can be especially helpful if the corporation faces repetitive lawsuits.

With conflicting regulations telling companies to destroy some documents while preserving others, confusion reigns. How important is it for firms to have a coherent policy regarding electronically stored information? What should this involve?

MK. The systems and procedures implemented must recognize that retention periods are different for different organizations in the business. Furthermore, merely classifying data and assigning a retention period is only a small part of the process. It should be placed in an archive-specific platform that retains the information for years or even decades. Magnetic disk and tape must be re-verified and migrated every 3-5 years over the life of the archive. Retention rules must be enforced by disposal of appropriate records at the end of the retention period. Finally, if records are on legal hold they must not be disposed of even if the retention period has expired. Software and hardware solutions such as the Plasmon Enterprise Active Archive solution enable these processes and policies to be implemented today.

EB. The human tendency being to hoard documents, corporations are keeping a much higher percentage of data than is actually required by their business needs or regulatory requirements. Once any business and regulatory timeline for saving documents has passed, corporations should not delay in destroying documents. Should a corporation be multinational, the laws of any country they operate within must also be incorporated into its document retention policy. For example, some European privacy laws dictate the destruction of personal and sensitive data within strict timeframes. European employees of a US corporation who do not abide by the European law, but rather follow the more expansive guidelines set out by the corporation’s document retention policy, can subject the corporation to liability.

GD. You must now know more about your information than ever before. Creating a consistent retention policy for all information, regardless of format, is critical. Implementing such a policy will help cut down on information to search in the future, as well as help to better categorize it for searching purposes. Too much information can make it difficult to find what is truly needed. That reduction in clutter grants another benefit as well. Most of the cost associated with discovery is during review – minimize this review process and save money. It’s that simple. A solid retention policy that helps you proactively manage your information certainly helps to facilitate this. The best-case scenario involves working closely with your RIM department and deploying a state-of-the-art federated records management application.

CF. A good records management program and retention policy is the first step in controlling data that could be involved in litigation. Without this first step, a company becomes vulnerable to spoilage of relevant data to a case. But that’s not all: a chain of custody for documents must be created from inception on up to discovery production to build a defensible process in the handling of documents involved in litigation.

Increasingly, e-discovery customers are not just law firms enmeshed in big corporate cases. Many companies are now working proactively with e-discovery vendors, getting a handle on their data troves so they can meet regulatory requirements. What additional business benefits can be gained from such an approach?

CF. Some of the biggest benefits are cost controls and reduction, expedited timelines for processing, and improved efficiencies in document review. By understanding the e-discovery process and enlisting the expertise of e-discovery solution providers, companies can implement the steps that drive data management improvements and allow a standardized workflow to be designed and in place before a litigation matter is started. Understanding a company’s data population, the types of files and the metadata within, and how those files should be processed for review can be a lengthy and involved procedure. Several iterations may take place before the final processing steps are decided upon. Since court-mandated discovery orders and impending production deadlines closely follow each other, precious time and money can be saved by having the e-discovery and discovery management workflow ironed out ahead of time.

GD. This is like buying an insurance policy: if you are prepared, answering a request is certainly easier. With this type of an approach, an organization’s legal department develops key skills in the e-discovery arena that typically were only available from a law firm. Resources can be used more effectively, including those in IT, and processes become repeatable. In the past, organizations have been responding to e-discovery with heavy IT involvement, as well as paying law firms to acquire the skill sets necessary to process collections for production. Unfortunately, the only repeatable process in many cases has been the act of signing the check for legal services rendered. By taking control of the process, organizations also become more aware of their information landscape, processes that can be streamlined through technology, and what can be preserved and repeated from one discovery to the next.

EB. Review constitutes the majority of the cost associated with litigation. By working with a preferred vendor, corporations can save millions of dollars by controlling how their documents are reviewed by outside counsel. Some firms utilize cutting-edge technology in reducing review times and saving their corporate clients money. At the other end of the spectrum there are law firms who still TIFF or PDF everything, unnecessarily increasing the overall cost of litigation. Corporations should create protocols or best practice guidelines for review associated with any litigation. Furthermore, corporations can leverage already processed data for use in other matters. Once data has been located, collected and de-duplicated, it can be produced in other matters related to the original or those that are completely new.

MK. Fixed content data often contains strategic value for the company. This information can be customer data, design files, patient records or digital assets that can be reused or repurposed to create future value. Having these assets safely archived, searchable and randomly accessible provides strategic value as well as mitigates risk. The amount of data to be archived will continue to grow, so finding a solution that meets your strategic and governance requirements will become an imperative. An effective archive strategy using archive-specific technology will also reduce IT costs. Implementing a tiered storage strategy to move data off high-performance, high-cost disk arrays to lower cost, archive storage platforms reduces the total cost of ownership.

Technology to the rescue?

IT will be a critical component in enabling companies to meet future e-discovery challenges. But what technologies are emerging to help CIOs streamline, store and recover their data effectively?

“Corporations and their CIOs will be looking to advanced searching technologies to assist them in future e-discovery projects,” says Xerox’s Craig Freeman. “With the volume of data that is being created electronically, the major challenge will be to accurately cull this information down for review and production. New advances in search technology will be one area to watch. Technologies that can group, catalogue and provide contextual information inside document text will be a big help in the challenge to manage the amount of data entering discovery review.”

CA’s Galina Datskovsky agrees. “The key tools are those that enable CIOs and General Counsel to both manage information assets proactively and then discover information from disparate content silos found across the organization,” he says. “Many companies today find that they have information residing in lots of different data sources resulting from mergers, acquisitions and departmental deployments; the challenge is to offer a unified management view into that information while respecting the repository choices previously made by functional areas. Using a combination of these tools ensures that you are managing the correct information, that it is managed in a consistent manner against corporate retention policies, that you are removing content that is not needed as soon as it is legally appropriate to do so, and that you are meeting legal and regulatory obligations without adding undue storage burdens.”

So what technologies are currently on the market to help companies address some of these issues? “UDO is the first storage technology specifically designed for long-term professional data archive requirements,” says Plasmon’s Mike Koclanes. “It provides data authenticity when archived data must remain unchanged for long periods of time. Permanent UDO media eliminates the need to do backups, enabling a low-cost solution that expends fewer management resources. Low power and cooling costs are roughly one-tenth those of spinning disk solutions, so this archive platform provides both a financially and environmentally responsible solution to long-term data archive.”

RenewData is another firm stepping up to the plate. “We can assist clients through our suite of e-discovery services for preservation, collection, processing, analysis, review and production of documents,” says Ellery Bucahanan. “Often, the data used in one matter is also subject to other litigation; RenewData offers clients a service to store their data in a cost-effective and legally defensible manner and in a state where it can be easily processed for review. The e-discovery solution enables corporations to store their data with a leader in the e-discovery field who utilizes a state-of-the-art secure facility staffed with e-discovery professionals so that they can cost effectively and reliably address their e-discovery requirements.”

Discovering e-discovery
Steps businesses should take to prepare for litigation include:

• Formalize document preservation and retention policies and procedures in a consistent, compliant, ‘good faith’ records management program
• Establish a litigation readiness team of legal, IT and records management that will establish the e-discovery process and deal with e-discovery issues
• Inventory systems and sources of data, and identify their content, location and preferred form of production
• For key systems, perform an initial assessment of the cost and methods of production to identify ‘not reasonably accessible’ systems
• Identify system custodians (administrators) and make sure they understand their roles
• Apply retention policies to the systems and data sources
• Develop, document, institute and verifiably enforce formal litigation hold and data preservation procedures

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RenewData introduces Backup Tape Liability Management Service to help reduce inherent liability of data stored on legacy devices

October 03, 2007

AUSTIN, Texas -- RenewData, a leading provider of electronic evidence and data migration services for corporations and law firms, today announced the availability of their Backup Tape Liability Management Service, which enables corporations to identify, de-duplicate, and possibly reducing data on large numbers of stored backup tapes.

RenewData’s Backup Tape Liability Management Service uses a secure process to quickly evaluate the content of backup tapes and reduce the ongoing storage costs associated with unnecessarily retaining tapes not required for a corporation’s legal, regulatory, or retention management purposes. Backup tapes containing data applicable to the corporations’ retention criteria can be returned to the client or consolidated on high-capacity media, while unresponsive tapes can be destroyed using a defensible process. This identification, de-duplication, reduction, and consolidation process helps corporations address the potential liability residing in large inventories of backup tapes and reduces the ongoing storage costs associated with retaining tapes deemed unnecessary. In addition, the information gained from the resulting reports accompanying this new service can be used to address rules 26(a)(1) and 26(f) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and may also be incorporated into corporate data retention policies.

“The growth in backup tape inventories continues to impact a corporation's storage and maintenance cost. Oftentimes, companies are unaware of the content contained within their backup tapes, resulting in an unknown liability risk," said Vivian Tero, Senior Research Analyst, Compliance Infrastructure, IDC. "RenewData's Backup Tape Liability Management Service addresses a need for solutions that enable organizations to gain more visibility regarding their tape content, as well as systematically reduce legacy backup tapes. With the information garnered from this solution, customers can facilitate more targeted identification and collection strategies, support their arguments for multi-phased discovery, and reduce their storage and maintenance costs.”

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Service evaluates the content of backup tapes to determine if storage is required.

By Deni Connor, Network World, 10/03/07

RenewData, a vendor of e-discovery and data migration services,  today launched a new service designed to help customers address liability issues associated with the content of backup tapes as well as limit the cost of storing backup tapes.

The RenewData Backup Tape Liability Management Service lets companies identify, de-duplicate and reduce the data stored on backup tapes. It lets customers evaluate the content of the tapes and delete and destroy them if they are not required for legal or regulatory management purposes.

The service is targeted at companies that are storing more than 10,000 backup tapes and those involved in litigation or in heavily regulated industries such as financial services.

The identification, de-duplication, reduction and consolidation of tapes helps customers identify their liability in keeping tapes. The service also can help customers abide by provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which require parties involved in litigation to provide a description of electronically stored information to other involved parties.

With the service, Renew Data will offer a secure facility for customers’ data and provide evidence of chain-of-custody procedures. RenewData experts also will testify in court regarding the processes and technologies used for storing backup tapes. The company also will retrieve data from out-dated media.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/100307-renewdata-ediscovery-backup-service.html

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RenewData is the latest to offer services that help users move data off tape storage

By Mary Jander, ByteandSwitch, October 3, 2007

Let's be blunt: Tape doesn't cut the mustard when it comes to e-discovery. While industry experts consider tape a viable alternative for enterprise backup, when it's time to retrieve stored data during litigation proceedings, tape's a no-go.

"You're basically asking for disaster if you rely on backup tapes for long-term preservation of business records and documents for search and retrieval," says Mark Diamond, CEO of IT consultancy Contoural. Very few companies, he says, have the facilities to recover specific items of data from 100 to 2,000 backup tapes -- especially with expensive lawyers waiting in the wings.

In an effort to avoid the kind of needle-in-the-haystack nightmare the above scenario conjures, organizations are turning to service providers for help. And, in turn, they're getting assistance in moving years' worth of data stored on tape to disk -- or deleting it altogether.

This week, for instance, RenewData, which specializes in legal archiving and e-discovery services, unveiled a Backup Tape Liability Management Service for users nationwide. RenewData loads customers' tapes into drives equipped with software that reads the data, reduces it by file de-duplication (more on that momentarily), and reserves what needs to be saved on disk -- or on tape for disaster recovery purposes only. RenewData will also destroy data that doesn't need to be saved.

If anyone has questions about the methods used to organize and/or destroy data, RenewData will offer court-ready evidence of its methodology and conformance to legal standards. A so-called Media Content Database Report, for instance, can be filed in response to specific aspects of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 26(a)(1).

RenewData has specialized in legal data recovery services since its founding in 2001. The Austin, Texas-based company now has 225 employees and claims as customers "several hundred" law firms and other kinds of organizations that turn to its services in the course of preparing evidence for court or in response to regulatory requests. In all, the company says it processed over 18 petabytes of data in 2006.

"We help companies as they move data into an archive or from one generation to another generation of archive," says Jeff Overton, director of product management at RenewData. "We're focused on old, tape-resident documents... We help you be proactive in advance of litigation."

RenewData has relationships with a range of vendors to support its services, including Attenex, Index Engines, Isilon, and Symantec. The company also partners with the oddly named iCONECTnxt, a firm that enables it to offer Web-based legal evidence hosting as an ASP reseller. Despite all the partnerships, RenewData claims the value of its services comes mainly from its own software, not any of the individual tools it may use to help customers in various situations.

One of the value-adds RenewData claims is the ability to de-duplicate files and data using an algorithm developed as part of the U.S. NIST National Software Reference Library. This spec uses hash values to identify files that can be eliminated from legal evidence because they're simply binaries, executables for common applications, or ancillary programs that come with most apps. RenewData claims it adds its own filters based on user-specific criteria.

RenewData provides an archive of its own for customers, but the company's wares are also compatible with third-party email archiving software, such as EMC, Postini, and Symantec, and Overton says RenewData's software supports a range of other .pst ingestion formats as well.

RenewData prices the service by the number of tapes a customer presents, how quickly they need the job done, and how much data inventory will result. The company's pitch is, apparently, that if users are willing to spend up to $3,600 per tape on manual retrieval, they'll spend 15 percent to 25 percent less per tape on RenewData's service. Translation: $540 to $900 per tape.

Other companies involved in e-discovery or data migration services are starting to offer similar services. Seagate's Recovery Services, for instance, include tape-based data organization and migration. Seagate has been offering the service through its acquisition of ActionFront Data Recovery Labs last year. Zantaz says it's offered a similar service since 2005. Even Iron Mountain says its data restoration services come with de-duplication capabilities similar to the ones RenewData offers. And Socha Consulting, an industry research firm specializing in e-discovery, lists more than 20 other firms on its site.

The vendors claim these services are in demand and growing fast, as users seek help with the demands that regulations and lawyers are placing on their ever-growing data stores. All indications are that this area will heat up even more.

http://www.byteandswitch.com/document.asp?doc_id=135456&f_src=byteandswitch_gnews

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Backup Tape Liability Management Services Enable Corporations to Minimize the Costs and Risks of Storing Backup Tapes

AUSTIN, Texas – October 2, 2007 — RenewData, a leading provider of electronic evidence and data migration services for corporations and law firms, today announced the availability of their Backup Tape Liability Management Service, which enables corporations to identify, de-duplicate, and possibly reduce data on large numbers of stored backup tapes. 

RenewData’s Backup Tape Liability Management Service uses a secure process to quickly evaluate the content of backup tapes and reduce the ongoing storage costs associated with unnecessarily retaining tapes not required for a corporation’s legal, regulatory, or retention management purposes. Backup tapes containing data applicable to the corporations’ retention criteria can be returned to the client or consolidated on high-capacity media, while tapes not meeting the criteria can be destroyed using a defensible process. This identification, de-duplication, reduction, and consolidation process helps corporations address the potential liability residing in large inventories of backup tapes and reduces the ongoing storage costs associated with retaining tapes deemed unnecessary. In addition, the information gained from the resulting reports accompanying this new service may be used to address Rules which require parties to provide a description of electronically stored information to the other party involved and that both parties “meet-and-confer” to discuss issues related to the discovery of electronically stored information.     

“The growth in backup tape inventories continues to impact corporations’ storage and maintenance costs. Oftentimes, companies are unaware of the content contained within their backup tapes, resulting in an unknown liability risk," said Vivian Tero, Senior Research Analyst, Compliance Infrastructure, IDC. "RenewData's Backup Tape Liability Management Service addresses a need for organizations to gain more visibility regarding their tape content, as well as systematically reduce their inventory of historical backup tapes. With the information garnered from this solution, customers can facilitate more targeted identification and collection strategies, support their arguments for multi-phased discovery, and reduce their storage and maintenance costs.”  

RenewData’s legal expertise, secure facility, and forensically sound chain-of-custody procedures ensure all data is handled appropriately to avoid questioning later if litigation occurs. RenewData e-discovery experts can also testify in Court regarding the processes and technology used during the Backup Tape Liability Management Service, as well as assist with 26(f) "meet and confer" discussions. Additionally, because many backup tapes in storage often contain antiquated data found in obsolete formats, corporations attempting in-house restoration and extraction of data from old media quickly realize the technical difficulties associated with doing so. As tape extraction experts, RenewData technicians ensure proper handling and restoration of outdated media formats and backup software.

“Many of our corporate clients are seeking ways to mitigate the liability inherent with storing thousands or even tens of thousands of backup tapes, and they need to ensure any historical data that can be deleted is safely destroyed, while preserved data remains accessible to discovery requests,” said Ellery Buchanan, CEO of RenewData. “Our Backup Tape Liability Management Service allows corporations to dramatically reduce the costs of retaining data, while potentially diminishing the scope and exposure of litigation holds. In addition, having this process carried out by RenewData experts greatly minimizes later allegations of spoliation or non-compliance.”

By approaching the issue proactively, corporations will know where their data resides, what type of data they have, and what the data represents – allowing for the possible reduction of large amounts of data and increased ability to identify data not reasonably accessible. RenewData’s Backup Tape Liability Management Service encompasses several steps corporations can take toward better management of their backup tape inventories, including a Physical Media Audit Report, Tape Sample Analysis, File Level and Data Content Reduction, and Data Consolidation.

CONTACTS

RenewData: Diane Block, Director of Marketing Communications, 512.276.5500, dblock@renewdata.com

Lois Paul & Partners: Erin Hanley, Account Manager, 512.638.5309, erin_hanley@lpp.com

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