Below is an interesting infographic on Sherpa Software’s favorite topic, email, courtesy of Microsoft. The infographic walks us through the evolution and history of email and how it has transformed the way we all interact.
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The following post is part six of a nine part video/blog series on e-discovery in Microsoft Exchange 2010. In last week’s post, Paul and Marta discussed some of the litigation hold features that Exchange 2010 offers. In this week’s segment, they’ll discuss personal archives and some of the challenges that come along with managing PST files. They’ll also dig a bit deeper into retention policies. Enjoy!
Paul: One thing that we haven’t talked about thus far is the personal archive. I know that Sherpa is heavily invested in the data management space, trying to help people, so I won’t say that we should get rid of PST files altogether. But, personally, I’ll be very happy if they all vanish. Poof!
Anyways, one of the things that the personal archive is supposed to do is to provide you with a way to take these PSTs (which can be scattered everywhere) and organize them on the Exchange server. You know; you can relocate them so that they can be managed, backed up, and ultimately discovered. How do you think Microsoft did with that as a version one feature in Exchange 2010?
Marta: Actually, I think they did a really good job with SP1. The key is being proactive when implementing it. PSTs can be quite a challenge, mostly because you usually don’t have any control over them. A PST is like any other individual file. You can put them anywhere. You can do anything with them. And once again, from a legal point of view, you are liable for them.
Read about what’s new in Microsoft Exchange 2010 SP1.
So, yeah, from this lack of control can stem many problems, most related to retention policies and lost files. Sherpa Software offers tools to help you transplant your PSTs into the personal archives, which basically acts as a one-stop shop for your retention policy, litigation hold policy, etc. Honestly, it’s fantastic. But you have to be proactive. You have to get your PSTs and put them into the personal archives. It’s not going to happen all by itself.
Paul: Yes; that’s an interesting way to think of it. Most of the time, when I talk to customers about personal archives, they like being able to give their users large mailboxes with extra space for old items that might be referred back to. As IT administrators, or the IT department, we have no idea if this stuff has any business value or not. The users say that it does, and we would rather have it in a personal archive than a deleted items folder.
A few weeks ago, I was working with a customer that had an end user with more than 80,000 items in their deleted items folder. Every time they were done with something in their inbox or any other folder, they would delete it. Then, if they needed it later, they would go into the deleted items folder and get it there. Now, as an Exchange admin, that just makes you want to cry. Thankfully, personal archives give us a way out of these types of situations. The conversation between the customer and the end user might go something like this:
“Okay, Mr. End User, I present you with this lovely 20GB quota archive, and you can put all of your old items in it! We’ll back it up. We’ll manage it. We’ll maintain it. And you can search it! You never have to worry about losing anything! Now . . . would you please stop filing things in deleted items?”
Marta: Definitely. I’ve seen some enormous mailboxes. You know, a lot of the attorneys…
Paul can’t help but interject.
Paul: They’re the worst about this! Aren’t they?
Marta: They really are. Executives and attorneys. And they have the most power in an organization. They can say, “Well, I should be exempt from the retention policy.”
Paul: Now, that’s an interesting question. Can you do that? I mean, can you have one tier policy for executives and separate tiers for other employees? Is that defensible in court?
Marta: Absolutely. If you articulate it, it’s completely defensible. First of all, though, you should really create your policies with not just your IT and business people, but your legal people, as well. They should all be involved in the process of creating the policy. If it does come down to the executives having a separate retention policy, just make sure that it’s written down. Make sure that everyone knows that this is the retention policy that they have to stick to. Again, as long as you have these things articulated, you will be covered.
Paul: Okay. Good. So, essentially, this whole process is about figuring out what you’re going to do, creating a policy that outlines these things, and then actually doing it and verifying that you have done it or are doing it?
Marta: Right. Also, keep in mind that in some organizations – financial services organizations, for example – there are certain regulations in place that dictate that emails for certain divisions (like brokers) must be stored for very long periods of time. They obviously have a completely separate retention policy archiving system from the secretary or another employee in the organization.
Paul: Yes, and to avoid scaring people too much, we’ll end by saying that, if you work in an industry like this, the odds are really good that you’re already aware of these policies.
Have you had success managing PST files with personal archives? What have been your experiences with tiered organizational retention policies? Let us know in the comments below!
Next week, Paul and Marta will move onto discussing the application of the features that they’ve discussed thus far. Check back for more insights into the e-discovery functionality of Microsoft Exchange 2010.
If you’re at all vested in the social media scene, you probably understand the power of a Twitter hashtag. Whether it’s #thebestdayever, #ladygagasbirthday, or something a little more topic oriented – say #emailsoftware – hashtags enable us to share with the world our feelings, opinions, or insights on a particular item or circumstance. With this in mind, we thought it might be interesting to take a look at one of our favorite topics through the lens of its hashtag – #ediscovery.
We could throw the information at you in text, but that’s no fun! Instead, we’ve whipped up an informative graphic (or infographic) for all of you visual learners. The graphic highlights some of the milestones, influencers, and general popularity of the #ediscovery hashtag over a one-month time period (Feb 11 – March 11, 2012). Needless to say, electronic discovery is a hot topic! When you’ve had a look, you can embed this image on your site by using the code below it. Enjoy!
<a href="http://www.sherpasoftware.com/blog/history-of-ediscovery-infographic"><img title="The History of E-Discovery" src="http://www.sherpasoftware.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/history-of-ediscovery.jpeg" alt="history of e-discovery" width="540" height="1755" /></a>
Pretty interesting, huh? If you’re interested in a given topic – be it e-discovery, software, what have you – the hashtag search is a great way to learn more about it from a variety of contributors. Over the next few months and into the future, we’ll be sprinkling in these fun infographics to help demonstrate the social traction of some of the topics that we cover regularly. If you have any questions or find something particularly interesting, feel free to let us know in the comments! While you’re at it, check out some of our other e-discovery blog posts.
Follow us on Twitter – @SherpaSoftware.
Much of the recent hype in technology has been related to cloud computing. Innovations in business applications as well as ones targeted to consumers have an element of a service-based architecture. It appears everyone assumes that “the cloud” is the wave of the future, but this may not be entirely true. There are many factors that go into whether using cloud computing is right or wrong for your company and/or industry. Are you a current Sherpa Software customer considering a cloud solution? Are you wondering how Sherpa’s offerings compare to that of the cloud? If so, are you curious if Sherpa plans to expand into the cloud or how we integrate or plan to integrate with cloud services? These are all things we’ll cover in this blog.
Cloud characteristics vs. on-premise characteristics
There are many differences between on-premise solutions and cloud solutions. Some of the most obvious characteristics include the most biggest difference – how they are accessed. On-premise solutions are just that, on-premise, installed on a user’s or users’ computers. Cloud solutions, on the other hand, are accessed via the internet, and typically hosted by a third-party vendor. The second big difference is the “pay as you go” or on-demand usage service model (cloud) versus the traditional upfront capital expenditure (on-premise). For accounting purposes, counting this on-demand usage as a “utility” versus a large capital expenditure can be very beneficial. Sometimes this is one of the more enticing aspects of using cloud services—the low cost/low entry point. Sherpa Software’s President, Kevin Ogrodnik, explored the total cost of ownership of cloud services versus on-premise solutions and arrived at different results than regularly anticipated.
Now, let’s take a closer look at some of the other important but not as obvious characteristics of the cloud offerings that exist. Customizations are typically administered and managed by the end users. Cloud providers don’t have the time or bandwidth to work on customizing the service for each of their clients (unless you are willing to pay a premium). Also, cloud offerings are generally platform neutral (any browser) and clients have the ability to scale resources both up and down as needed (also known as “rapid elasticity”). Resource pooling is yet another attractive characteristic of cloud offerings, as clients share resources, allowing the cloud vendor to distribute the cost savings to all of its clients (multi-tenancy).
What are some of the biggest advantages to using cloud services?
Cloud computing can save your company a lot of up front and on-going IT expenses. In theory, when compared to on-premise applications, cloud-based services reduce hardware, software and internal IT needs. The low cost of entry to start using hosted applications and the savings of not paying a large up front capital expenditure are promising reasons to start using the cloud. Speed of setup and implementation also make moving to the cloud an attractive option to consider.
What are some of the existing cloud offerings’ biggest limitations?
The most talked about and hyped concern is security. It is currently one of the most limiting factors in cloud adoption. In theory, you could be sharing space and services with your biggest competitors. Do you trust all of your information and biggest trade secrets out there in cyberspace? Limitations in integrating your company’s existing processes with the cloud could be another factor in migrating. Custom databases of customer information may not always be easily migrated to the cloud. Availability could be another limiting factor of using a cloud service. Although rare, there have been reported outages with popular cloud services. These can certainly be disruptive and depending on the value of the information being accessed, could be disastrous to your organization. Outages are, of course, not limited to cloud services alone; they could and do occur in on-premise applications as well. But the resolution of the cloud outages puts you at the mercy of the vendor, which is not always an appealing proposition.
Another important consideration with moving data/applications to the cloud is getting your data back. Data in cloud applications may be stored in proprietary formats and recovering it generally requires custom service requests, which typically come with additional costs. For instance, a company recently evaluating hosted email had to pay the service provider over $30,000 to retrieve email from the cloud servers to complete an e-Discovery request. And that was just to get the data back! It did not include actually completing the necessary e-Discovery processes. Regulatory requirements also challenge cloud implementations. For example, laws in certain countries enforce restrictions on the storage of local data outside the country. So, if you are operating in these countries, you will need to ensure that the location where the vendor is storing the data complies with the prevailing laws and regulations.
What is Sherpa Software able to do related to the cloud? What are Sherpa’s future plans?
In terms of our cloud capabilities, Sherpa Software is currently able to help organizations prepare for impending email migrations to the cloud from on-premise versions of both Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange environments. Sherpa’s tools provide a way to selectively consolidate, collect and organize the data to minimize the effort required to transition data to the cloud. This could mean automating tasks such as centralizing all PST data from throughout the organization, even user desktops, to ensure all available data is easily accessible to migrate.
In terms of future plans, the next version of Discovery Attender for Exchange (version 3.8, slated for a 2012 mid-summer release) will be able to selectively download data from IMAP-based email systems (Gmail, for example). This version will also include the ability to download data from Office 365. Recall the situation above, where a company had to pay over $30,000 to get their data back from their cloud service provider. Version 3.8 of Discovery Attender will provide the ability to download this data from the hosted vendor into a PST and search it at a fraction of the cost! The next versions of Sherpa’s Lotus Notes products (Discovery Attender, Compliance Attender and Mail Attender) will all include cloud capabilities as well. Mail Attender for Notes will include the ability to archive to the cloud. Compliance Attender for Notes will allow journaling and “graveyarding” emails to the cloud. And finally, Discovery Attender for Notes will be able to search these cloud-based archives/journals to complete e-Discovery requests.
In summation, there is no real right or wrong answer in determining if you should move applications to the cloud. It depends on what is right for your company and your particular situation. As outlined in this article, there are definite advantages and disadvantages to using cloud-based services. A general guideline, however, might be that if you do have extensive or complex information management restrictions/regulations, the cloud may not be flexible enough for your situation. Just because the hype right now is to the move to the cloud, does not mean it is also the right thing for you. Make sure you do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Whether you plan to go to the cloud or not, Sherpa Software is here to help and provide more information. For more information, feel free to contact us.
The following post is part five of a nine part video/blog series on e-discovery in Microsoft Exchange 2010. In the previous segment, Paul and Marta discussed role-based access control and data retention policies. This week, they’ll look at litigation hold policies and some of the litigation hold features in Exchange 2010. Enjoy!
Paul: Let’s talk about litigation hold policies. We probably can’t describe them as being a “super retention policies” or a subset of retention policies, but normally, litigation hold has a specific meaning in the broader context of discovery. It means that when you are notified that you’re under litigation, or once you’ve become aware that you’re party to it, there are certain things that you’re not allowed to do. The legal term is ‘spoliation of evidence’. So, essentially, it means that you aren’t allowed to modify or delete records that would ordinarily be included in the discovery.
There have been multiple well-documented cases that involved spoliation of evidence. Take Oliver North and the Iran-Contra affair, for instance – he and his secretaries stuffing all of these paper records into the shredder. And the same thing happens for electronic records. Litigation hold is designed to keep people from doing that. Is that fair?
Marta: Yeah, actually, it’s designed so that you have a repository of data, be it in the same place or separate, where that data cannot be touched. Litigation hold, in a very basic form, is alerting everyone (all of your custodians, or whoever has access in your plan) that these certain people are under litigation hold. All data needs to be secured and preserved.
The technical term is ‘preservation’. You’re either going to preserve it by making a copy of it and storing it somewhere or preserving it in place, which Microsoft has made possible in the Exchange 2010 implementation. The key is that there needs to be a given process. You can’t just go up to everybody, tap their shoulders, and say, “You need to hold this data.” Although people have done it, it’s becoming far less defensible now. People do make mistakes. They forget and delete stuff. You’ve seen a lot of recent litigation judgments that have really come to frown upon that process. They want something that’s far more straightforward and defined.
Paul: What about if you’re using a version of Exchange or Lotus Notes, or something like that? Do litigation hold policies apply? I mean, what are you supposed to do? As soon as you become aware, do you take a backup of your data and lock it in a safe?
Marta: Essentially. In electronic terms, what many people do is create a PST, for example, of the person’s mailbox, on a secure drive. In many cases, people actually create backups of their secure drives to hedge against media failure. If your media fails, and the information on your drive isn’t accessible, you have no excuse. So naturally, it’s not a bad idea to have a backup.
There was actually a recent case where someone had taken a thumb drive, placed the evidence on it, and figured that everything was taken care of. Well, when they came to get the evidence, they couldn’t extract the data from the thumb drive (even forensically). Consequently, adverse judgment was set against them for spoliation of data. This type of thing can happen. So, not only do you want to backup your data, but you might even consider backing up your backup.
Paul: That’s interesting in the context of ‘safe harbor’ requirements we talked about earlier, because safe harbor requires not only that you make a good faith effort, but also that you apply a reasonable standard of care. If you have some critical data, putting it on a thumb drive and stashing it in your desk drawer doesn’t necessarily meet a reasonable security standard.
Marta: The judge certainly doesn’t think so.
Paul: So, in Exchange 2010, Microsoft has implemented litigation hold features. The recoverable items folder is similar to the ‘dumpster’, or the deleted item retention folder that we had earlier. When a normal user deletes an item, that item will go into the recoverable items folder, where it is recoverable by the user. What happens for a user under litigation hold, though?
Well, when litigation hold is enabled for a user’s mailbox, every item that they try to delete is not just going into the deleted items folder. Instead, each deleted item is safeguarded in a recoverable items folder – a folder that the user does not have access to under litigation hold. Essentially, they can’t see that everything they delete is being backed up, and they don’t have access to it, either.
Now, this also applies to modifications. Microsoft has implemented what they call ‘copy on write’, and what this means is that for every item that is edited or modified, a copy of the altered version will be stored in recoverable items. So basically, if you need to be able to prove that someone did or did not make a change, did or did not delete something at a particular point in time, this litigation hold feature gives you that ability. From a legal standpoint, it sounds like it’s fairly important to be able to show that you’re safeguarding what you were supposed to preserve.
Marta: Absolutely. Even in implementing litigation hold policies and showing signs of good faith. These things are all very important features of Exchange 2010, and a big step forward for Microsoft.
Have the new litigation hold features in Microsoft Exchange 2010 made for more feasible policy implementation? What features would you like to see added? Let us know in the comments below!
Check back soon for part six, in which Paul and Marta will continue their discussion on the legal e-discovery features in Microsoft Exchange 2010!
Sherpa Software is always focused on superior customer support. It is important to us that the customers we serve have a great experience with us from the beginning of our relationship through the purchasing decision, and into any necessary technical support post implementation. One way in which we measure our customers experience is through a follow up correspondence that asks them to let us know how we did and if the product they purchased is meeting their expectations. Below is the response from Joel Commaford the Network Administrator at Nott Company located in Arden Hills, Minnesota.
Joel recently started using Discovery Attender and below he shares his thoughts on the product and the company.
Q: What would you say is unique about Sherpa, our services or our way of doing business?
A: I would say the tool itself is unique in that it is the only tool I saw that allows me perform e-discovery searches for all types of items from the same interface. (files, mail items, offline archive mail, etc). The service they offer to get you up and running with training is also unique. They want you to use their software but equally important is to know “how” to use the software.
Q: Has Discovery Attender delivered as promised?
A: Yes, the product does everything I wanted it to do and was easy to set up and use.
Q: In what ways did Sherpa make it easy for you to do business with us?
A: It was very easy to reach support for any questions I had. This was my first attempt at using. For the most part it was straight forward but I was able to run questions by support easily.
Q: Would you recommend Discovery Attender to others?
A: Yes, I would comfortably recommend this product.
Q: Should the opportunity arise, would you do business with Sherpa Software again?
A: Yes we would.
Thanks for the review, Joel! We encourage others to leave feedback on our products so that we can continually work to improve you’re experience!
