eDiscovery Daily Blog
Five More Things to Know Before Moving eDiscovery to the Cloud – eDiscovery Best Practices
Yesterday, we covered the first five items in Joel Jacob’s article in Information Management.com (10 Things to Know Before Moving E-Discovery to the Cloud), which provides an interesting checklist for those considering a move to cloud computing. Here are the remaining five items, with some comments from me.
6. Assess potential – and realistic – risks associated with security, data privacy and data loss prevention. The author notes the importance of assessing security risks, and, of course, it’s important to understand how the cloud provider handles security and that there are clear-cut policies and objectives in place. It’s also important to compare the cloud provider’s security mechanisms to your own security mechanisms. Any cloud provider “worth their salt” should have a comprehensive security plan that meets or exceeds that of most organizations.
7. Develop an implementation plan, including an internal communication strategy. The author advocates getting legal and IT on the same page, testing and conducting a proof of concept on work procedures and identifying quantifiable metrics for evaluating the system/service. All solid ideas.
8. Leverage the success or adoption of other SaaS solutions in the organization to lessen resistance. The author notes that “process of moving to the cloud and/or moving e-discovery to the cloud will need to be driven through cultural change management”. However, they already likely use several SaaS based solutions. Here are some of the most popular ones: Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay and YouTube. Oh, and possibly Google Docs and SalesForce.com as well. That should address resistance concerns.
9. Run a pilot on a small project before moving to larger, mission-critical matters. The author advocates finding a test data set or dormant case that has known outcomes, and running it in the new cloud solution. The cloud provider should enable you to do so via a no risk trial (shameless plug warning, here’s ours), so that you can truly try it before you buy it, with your own data.
10. Understand you are still the ultimate custodian of all electronically stored information. As the author notes, “The data belongs to you, and the burden of controlling it falls on you. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure state that no matter where the data is hosted, the company that owns it is ultimately responsible for it.” That’s why it’s critical to address questions about where the data is stored and mechanisms for securing your company’s data. If you can’t answer those questions to your satisfaction with the cloud provider you’re evaluating, perhaps they’re not the provider for you.
So, what do you think? Have you implemented a SaaS based solution for eDiscovery? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.