Businesses lag in e-discovery
Survey finds most U.S. companies cannot meet federal court requirements
By Chris Preimesberger the survey of 111 companies in the ‘We might be liable under the new
Just over a year after the fall of 2007 for MessageOne, which laws for not keeping all our e-mails
institution of the revised Fed- develops business continuity and and word docs,’” he said.
eral Rules of Civil Procedure, disaster recovery products. Many companies are still unclear
about two-thirds of U.S. businesses Recent court cases have demon- on the concept of e-discovery in gen-
remain unprepared to meet strict strated that companies are expected eral, Osterman said.
federal court requirements for the to show a clear retention policy, “There really is no consensus
discovery and handling of electronic Osterman said. yet on whether a company should
evidence, according to a data storage “I don’t think it’s difficult to keep all its e-mail and other docs,
researcher. understand the [FRCP] rules or whether a company should keep
The new FRCP regu- a finite number of years’
lations, ordered by the E-discovery worth of data, or whether
U.S. Supreme Court in Businesses appear to be behind the curve in developing it should keep more than
April 2006 and in effect ways to store and retrieve electronic documents in accor- 30 days’ worth of data,” he
since December of that dance with federal court regulations, according to researcher said. “As long as a com-
year, mandate that busi- Michael Osterman. Of the companies he recently surveyed: pany can prove it has pre-
nesses must be able to 47% have some kind of e-mail retention policy dictable methods of stor- quickly produce such in place ing or not storing data,
data—including e-mail, it can show the court it
digital word documents, 53% lack a policy to govern e-mail retention and has some sort of policy
images, and digital audio deletion in place.”
and video—when required 67% allow individual users to determine how long The uncertainty is about
by litigation in a federal messages are kept by the company the nature of the policies,
court. 66% do not have the e-mail archiving technology which can be different To that end, a rela- required to manage e-mail retention, litigation for each company. Only
tively new IT sector built holds and e-discovery 47 percent of companies
around efficient storage Source: Osterman Research have some kind of e-mail
and access to legacy busi- retention policy in place,
ness data has been developing, that business owners don’t know Osterman said.
but apparently the genre still has about them,” he told eWeek. “I just If they are taken to court, these
plenty of space to grow. At the one- think it sometimes takes ‘headline companies would likely be required
year milestone, it appears that few shock’ to make people move on to search backup tapes, desktop
potential customers are paying somethings, especially when we’re files and legacy systems to find
attention and that many are simply talking about potential liabilities. information that was deleted in the
ignoring the rules, according to a In other words, if it hasn’t hap- absence of a good-faith retention
recent survey. pened to them yet, it hasn’t hap- policy, Osterman said.
“The survey reveals serious legal pened.” Manual e-discovery searches can
issues for organizations that are Osterman said it often takes bad be costly.
either ignoring the new federalman- news happening to another com- In addition, companies lacking
datesforcomplianceande-discovery pany before business owners get an e-discovery policy risk being
or are clearly not well-educated serious about their own potential sanctioned for the illegal destruc-
on how to meet the technical litigation problems. tion of evidence, including court-
requirements,” said IT researcher “Let’s face it: Unless some com- room penalties that can cost a
Michael Osterman of Osterman pany gets hit by a $15 million judg- company an important legal case
Research. ment, it is difficult for an IT manager on pr oc ess grounds, Os term an
Osterman Research conducted or a CIO to go to his board and say, said. ´
