eDiscovery Compliance for Existing and Planned Information Systems

>eDiscovery compliance is a must for everyrequires serious investments (thousand of man hours
enterprise utilizing and storing electronic information.of a highly skilled labor). The Callback File System will
New federal rules mandate unprecedented changessolve this problem for you.
to an enterprise data storage policies. This paperCallback File System is a software component for
discusses use of custom file system to simplifydevelopers allowing virtual real-time representation of
transition from non-compliant to fully compliantany data as files and folders of an ordinary file
system and ways to make a planned infrastructuresystem. The files may be accessed through a
compliant from the beginning.currently used software without necessity to write
According to National Law Journal (2006), about 90%adapters, parsers, or converters. Callback File System
of business documents are stored in electronic form,is based on a kernel-mode driver and,  therefore,
while between 60 and 70% of corporate data residenecessitates implementation of only limited number of
in e-mails or in attachments.callback functions, without need for low level file
Recent government regulations, the amendments tosystem programming. Use of Callback File System
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), effectiveallows your developer to implement all new FRCP
December 1, 2006, mandate a completely new levelprovisions in the shortest amount of time. The main
of corporate electronically stored information (ESI)arguments for use of Callback File System to
treatment and litigation readiness. An amended Ruleincrease eDiscovery compliance of a computer
33(d) states that the business should be able "toinfrastructure are the following:
afford to the party serving the interrogatory1. Presentation of any data as files and folders
reasonable opportunity to examine, audit or inspectimproves preparedness for an eDiscovery event.
such records and to make copies, compilations,Good document organization and their availability
abstracts, or summaries." Rule 34(b)(i) stipulates thatmakes an investigation possible, and reduces the time
"a party who produces documents for inspection shalllaw-enforcement officers need to find necessary
produce them as they are kept in the usual coursedocuments, regardless of their format or location.
of business or shall organize and label them toYou can arrange your documents by simulating virtual
correspond with the categories in the request".folders within month-day-year, thematic, or any other
The new regulation effectively forces businesses tohierarchy.
develop an eDiscovery response strategy on the2. To facilitate eDiscovery procedure, the data
very early stage, making early acceptance of newcomprising e-mails and instant messages must be
record management technologies and tools a must.made easily accessible to investigators. Functionality
At the same time, according to survey by Oceof Callback File System permits presentation of this
Business Services (2007) only 10% of enterprises areunstructured content as regular files, thus making
well prepared to face an eDiscovery request. 55% ofsearch through them as easy as an ordinary
companies consider themselves not to be preparedWindows search. The distributed nature of Callback
enough. An finally, 35% of respondents did not evenFiles Systems makes possible single-run searches of
understand the changes brought by FRCPdata spread across several platforms and storages.
amendments very well.3. Callback File System allows presentation of data in
This paper discusses the ways to make yourany format stored either locally or remotely: in
enterprise information system eDiscovery compliantdatabase records, on mobile devices, in Internet
the most effective way.storage, spread over several data storages, or
Why eDiscovery compliance is important? The mainelsewhere.
threats to a non compliant enterprise come from4. Use of Callback File System allows assignment of
litigation costs, company downtime, and brandthe data access privileges scheme, which makes
damage.possible setting restriction on read and write
Litigation costs and legal fees associated withoperations, or, to protect data from tampering, by
improper ESI management result from spoliation ofgiving read-only access.
evidence, adverse inference, summary judgment, andTo summarize: with the help of Callback File System
sanctions (see Qualcomm v. Broadcom). In genderyour developers will be able to adapt an existing
discrimination lawsuit (Zubulake v. UBS Warburg), theinformation system to recent FRCP requirements
court ordered defendant to produce all electronicquickly and without significant system downtime.
evidence at its own expense - a huge amount ofSystem in planing
data stored on optical disks, active servers, andNeedless to say, all newly developed enterprise
backup tapes. Some tapes appeared to beinfrastructures dealing with electronically stored
non-functional or tampered with - the defendant wasinformation must be designed eDiscovery compliant
facing monetary charges for its failure to preservefrom the beginning. One of the good ways to deeply
the missing tapes and e-mails. It is important to pointintegrate FRCP requirements into a system being
out that while judicial procedures did not reveal anyplanned is th use of Solid File System (SolFS). This
documents supporting the plaintiff, the defendant lostsoftware component makes possible creation of
the case because of the improper storage andhuge encrypted distributed data storages with
management of company documents.support of metadata, tags, timestamping, access
Cost of company downtime due to on-site orrules, strong encryption, etc. The benefit of
off-site discovery process are best illustrated withSolFS-based storages can be briefly outlined as
the following real-life example. The United Statesfollowing:
Secret Service executed a search warrant at SJ1. Excellent document organization is certainly a
Games Inc. office  computers looking for evidencebenefit of a SolFS-storage. Regardless of a place
of data piracy (SJ Games, Inc. v. United Stateswhere these documents are stored, the enterprise
Secret Service). Due to huge amount of data,can be sure that they are not prone to loss,
officers decided to remove company hardware to atempering/spoliation, inadvertent or intentional
dedicated site for an off-site search. The hardwaredestruction.
was not recovered until four months later. The2. Built-in cryptographic protection of SolFS excludes
company had to lay-off half of its employees andunauthorized data access. The most efficient moder
was ready to close its doors. Some of the SJ Gamescryptographic algorithms may be used to not only
expenses were recovered in court only three yearsencrypt/decrypt data, but also to timestamp them
later.and allow integrity checks.
Brand damage and  losses associated with bad PR,3. Self-integrity checks is another extremely useful
loss of clients' trust leading to loss of clients, stocksfunctionality of SolFS-based storages. Even if a media
plunges, etc. can mount up after the general publicwhere the storage is located  becomes physically
finds out that the search warrant was issued againstdamaged and unreadable through negligence or
an enterprise. It is in the company's interest toevidence spoilage effort, it will not result in loss of
complete the unpleasant procedures and clean itsthe whole storage. The damaged part can be
name as soon as possible.reconstructed from the previous version of the
Good data organization, ease of retrieval, protectionstorage. This effectively excludes situations similar to
from spoliation and tempering are the key elementsone that resulted in defendant's loss in Zabulake v.
of eDiscovery preparedness. I will consider twoUBS Warburg case.
potential situations: when the data storage4. To make access to your storage as regular files
infrastructure is already in place and when theand folders from any application, you may utilize
system is at the planning stage.SolFS Driver Edition. It makes possible development
Existing systemof monitoring tools watching the changes made to
If your data storage infrastructure is working, youfiles inside a SolFS storage and exporting them in any
should take great care in making it eDiscoveryconvenient format for eDiscovery investigation.
compliant without disruptions to its operations. A5. Providing a whole integral storage to the
compliance-oriented system should not interfere withinvestigators for on-site or off-site search is faster
normal everyday functions of the existing softwareand cheaper than dealing with myriads of separate
and hardware infrastructure.files, folders, database records, e-mails, instant
It would be nice to find means to avoid introductionmessages and scattered other the whole
of changes into a stabile and functioning logics ofsystem.eDiscovery compliance of an enterprise can
your system. Such changes generally lead tobe significantly improved through implementation of
introduction of potential instabilities in its work andefficient document storage, retrieval, indexing, and
may lead to huge expenses for testing andcontent search strategies. The efficient way to
bug-fixing. There is a way to avoid theseadopt an existing system is use of Callback File
inconveniences - give access to your documentsSystem developed by EldoS Corporation. On the
stored inside your system as if they were files andstage of system design planning, it is natural to
folders on a virtual disk. You may object thatconsider use of Solid File System Driver Edition by
in-house development of such virtual disk capabilitiesEldoS Corporation as a native data storage platform.