Is Your Company's Data Ready to Withstand Legal Scrutiny?

Email messages, invoices, internal memos, customer data, company policy manuals, and other electronic documents can affect the outcome of a legal proceeding. In addition, some sensitive information such as patient health information or customer credit card numbers must be adequately secured and could be subject to a host of regulations. Whether you're concerned about potential lawsuits or regulatory compliance, it's important to consider how you collect, store, and protect data. Do it properly to make sure that your data will hold up in court.

Understanding e-Discovery

If your firm is involved in a legal proceeding, it will likely be subject to an "e-discovery" process. E-discovery involves collecting, preparing, reviewing, and producing electronic documents related to the case. Rule 34 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure covers producing documents and electronically stored information. The rule states that you must "produce documents as they are kept in the usual course of business or must organize and label them to correspond to the categories in the request." Finding the requested documents isn't necessarily easy, making it important to plan ahead for this possibility. A little preparation now can save you time, money, and hassles later. For example, email messages between a manager and a subordinate involved in a sexual harassment lawsuit may be relevant to the case. But how are you going to retrieve those messages and are there any controls in place to ensure that the messages cannot be tampered with? By implementing an encrypted email archive, you can store all company emails in a secure, tamper-free environment.

What Controls Do You Have in Place?

Depending on your business type, it may be subject to specific regulations such as HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley. If so, electronic data compliance is not optional; it's required, and the penalties for non-compliance may be stiff. Even if you are not subject to regulations, maintaining your data's integrity is important. For example, imagine what would happen if one of your employees lost a laptop containing confidential information. In addition to external threats, what if a disgruntled employee decided to edit your company policy manual or other sensitive documents? Storing documents online, locking them so they can't be edited, and having an audit trail so you can see who has interacted with those documents are some measures you can put into place. Fortunately, encrypted email archives and electronic document management systems are readily available to: ensure prompt document retrieval, comply with regulations, preserve the integrity of your data, and keep your data safe.

The Basics of Document Management

A variety of document management systems, archives, and software exists. While the specifics vary from one solution to the next, most address the following:

• Collecting and storing data
• Managing, indexing, and organizing data
• Securing data
• Distribution of and access to data
• Retention and disposal of data

If a court requests electronic documents from your company, are you ready to respond? With the right systems and safeguards in place, you can promptly comply with any legal request and do so with data that has been properly collected, stored, and secured. Without a document management system or policy in place, your case may be stacked against you.