Now, picture an organization that has implemented an optimized eDiscovery process with cloud-based eDiscovery tools. Rather than working long hours to search for data when litigation appears, they run various complex searches and compare results in seconds. Thus, they respond to eDiscovery requests quickly while reducing data collection and review costs.

eDiscovery Challenges

eDiscovery requests appear straightforward at first: Deliver all the information relevant to the pending case. But the subtleties of modern communication and information storage complicate the process in a variety of ways.

For example, organizations with a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy face a formidable data gathering challenge. Employees often combine personal and business use on laptops, tablets, and smartphones. In addition, they may use a variety of third-party applications to do their work and probably have not retained some critical information.

As devices and data storage locations multiply, increasing volumes of data must be searched and reviewed, ballooning eDiscovery costs.

Once a pending or lawsuit or preservation letter is received, one of the key steps is the deposition of the target company. At this point, the legal team is interested in determining what information is available from the organization.

Overcome eDiscovery Challenges with Consistent, Secure, and Quick eDiscovery Tools

Instead of reacting in a frenzy to requests for eDiscovery, modern organizations practice solid information governance, and employ effective eDiscovery tools that are consistent, secure, and quick:

• Consistent – Organizations need to produce consistent results when performing eDiscovery searches and have confidence in both the results they obtain as well as stating that confidence to the people requesting that data.
• Secure – Guaranteeing the integrity of the data is vital. Some eDiscovery systems are built into the data management systems or applications. These could be compromised “accidentally” or “willfully” by individuals tasked with maintaining system.
• Quick – The time to discover, search and produce information often requires multiple individuals with the associated costs in time and effort. Solutions should be quick, and efficient and reduce overall effort spent performing discoveries.

The Modern, Cloud-Based eDiscovery Approach

Consistent, secure, and quick eDiscovery tools empower legal teams to sift through all their data in minutes. These modern cloud-based solutions enable personnel to review and analyze data in place, then collect only relevant electronically stored information (ESI). Thus, they are enabled to:

• Perform all eDiscovery efforts in-house and decide sooner to litigate vs. settle to save money and resources.
• Identify and review relevant data before collection and confidently reduce the amount of data to collect, hold, and review.
• Process discovery requests quickly and reduces the risks of sanctions while maintaining a continuous chain of custody.

Modern eDiscovery tools expand eDiscovery from just email by adding data sources to index and search. They provide quick access to electronic information from various sources such as Microsoft OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams, Citrix ShareFile, Box, Slack, Egnyte, and others.

The modern, cloud-based approach allows centralization of eDiscovery and the ability to keep critical data where it currently resides. Your data stays safe and protected there or you may want to extract copies to meet more strict retention requirements.

Quick eDiscovery Tools Reduce Costs

Modern, high-speed eDiscovery tools position organizations to:

• Reduce Costs – The bulk of eDiscovery costs arise from the collection and initial review of data to discover information pertinent to the discovery request. Streamlining this process saves time and dollars by limiting items produced for final review.
• Simplify the Process – Organizations today are spending more time with discovery. They need to simplify the process instead of complicating it with multiple tools, data formats and complex search tools and syntaxes.
• Shorten the Learning Curve – Discovery teams get up to speed quickly and easily using a familiar and easy-to-navigate web-based interface. Searching is simple with easy-to-understand search terms and intelligent syntax.
• Respond Quickly to eDiscovery Requests – No more scrambling. Teams locate and produce the needed information quickly, without interrupting regular business operations.
• Practice Early Case Assessment (ECA) – With a clear picture of the relevant data, business leaders and their counsel make informed strategic decisions early on.

For large or small organizations, these solutions should be able to scale to any number of users and any amount of data. Expect them to provide support for multiple auditors and allow for graduated access levels of security.

The Right Tools from eDiscovery Experts

Modern eDiscovery tools connect to all the organization’s unstructured data locations. They identify relevant data and maintain an up-to-date index of the information before any data is collected.

With consistent, secure, and quick eDiscovery tools and processes, business leaders gain visibility into data in seconds, reduce the data sets to present to attorneys, and accelerate early case assessment. It all adds up to much lower eDiscovery costs.

The best time to prepare for litigation is now, long before a court order appears. The consultants and project managers at eGovernance.com help organizations practice efficient eDiscovery. And with deep knowledge of Office 365 and other pertinent technologies, they can assist modern data and identity governance.

The post Reduce Costs with Secure and Quick eDiscovery Tools appeared first on eGovernance.

Connected Archiving Accelerates Business

Working from the cloud allows connected users to work anytime from anywhere. With more staff working remotely, easy access to the tools and information needed for individuals and organizations to perform their assigned roles becomes critical.

The Cloud removes the pain arising from lack of access and inadequate distribution by allowing for shared files, real time updates and easy information flow. With your data hosted in the cloud, you’ll accelerate projects, improve decision making and deliver better customer service.

Azure Hosted Secure eGovernance Cloud

• Full Microsoft security around Azure
• Regionalized deployments if required (U.S. only at this point)
• Multi-hosted archive system
• Redundant virtualized server resources

Scalable Storage Adjusts Quickly

Working from the Cloud provides scalability at a moment’s notice. Should the amount of data in discovery, processing or storage increase, the Cloud automatically adjusts to support it quickly and easily.

Acquire a new company or downsize an old division? Cloud storage scales on demand, meeting your needs the moment they appear.

Cloud Storage Trims IT Budgets

Locating data in the cloud maximizes all your IT dollars. The Cloud provides affordable storage and saves on balance sheet headaches and capital purchases. Forget about buying equipment, building out, and operating a data center or computer closet.

You’ll enjoy a significant savings on hardware, facilities, utilities, and other expenses required by traditional computing. Likewise, the purchase of multiple software licenses and onsite servers goes away. Therefore, moving to the cloud trims your IT budget in exciting ways.

eGovernance Cloud is eCare Supported

• All servers monitored by eMazzanti Network Operations Center
• Standard system alerts plus application alerts
• 24X7 Monitoring and management of systems
• Daily data physical backups
• Automated patch management
• Automated server refreshes

Data Secured in the Cloud

Moving to the Cloud often raises security concerns. Many believe that since the Cloud is accessible and inherently tied to the internet, it is more vulnerable to cyber-attack. However, all modern IT systems invariably connect to the Internet.

Hence, whether your systems reside on premise or in the cloud, the degree of vulnerability remains the same. The cloud might even be less vulnerable, given empty office situations and updates that cause down time.

Cloud computing operates as a distributed network. Without a high concentration of data in one place, recovery from an attack happens more quickly and easily.

eGovernance Cloud is Fully Managed

• Managed by qualified application administrators
• Zero risk of misconfiguration
• Elimination of privilege user caused data loss (compliance)
• Audited and authorized change control
• Ongoing review and pre-emptive remediation of issues

Recoverable

Hosting systems and storing documents on the cloud provides for an intelligent approach to disaster recovery. Man-made and natural disasters tend to damage equipment, shut off power, and incapacitate critical IT functions.

With today’s remote workforce, many hardware-centric IT department personnel can’t gain physical access to on-premises systems in an emergency. That may show up as a security risk if staff can’t actively or remotely patch and update the technology. With your data in the Cloud, you’ll enjoy redundancy and accessibility no matter what, should a disaster happen.

eGovernance Cloud is Secure and Recoverable

• Secured Azure environment with physical SOC2 compliance and encryption of all data at rest and in transit
• Data integrity with full hardware redundancy and data backups
• Fully administered (systems and application), reducing IT management overhead, costs, and potential misconfiguration
• Data secured from accidental or malicious destruction or alteration by all parties, including privileged users without formal requests and controls
• Available 24X7 from any location or from restricted locations with a 99.9% sustained uptime

Affordable and Connected Archiving

With a low monthly fee, eGovernance Cloud compares in cost to Microsoft Archiving but works much faster. It requires no administration, resulting in reduced IT overhead. Redundant storage and backup protect against disaster outages and data loss.

A flexible tool, eGovernance Cloud supports multiple and varied data sources, both cloud and local. Its quick search capabilities save expensive user and resource time. And its efficient open architecture allows for quick and easy export or migration of archived data.

At eMazzanti Technologies, we believe the CUSTOMER owns the data. Therefore, we have no restrictions on the export of data. In fact, we provide easy and economical options for exporting of data to industry standard formats or for migration directly to other solutions such as Microsoft 365.

We’re seeing a new normal for IT departments, archiving and compliance. The information governance experts at eMazzanti stand ready to address your archiving questions and concerns relating to the new and varied challenges you face.

The post Connected and Affordable Archiving from eGovernance Cloud appeared first on eGovernance.

Ultimately, the drawbacks of legacy archiving systems will outweigh the benefits they provide.

Legacy archiving systems rack up costs in several ways, including expensive upgrades, hard to get technical support, and incompatibility with current file types. In addition, they require expensive extra storage, create compliance headaches, and lack modern search capabilities.

Replace Legacy Archiving Systems with eGovernance Cloud

A versatile tool, eGovernance Cloud covers multiple data sources (both local and cloud). Quick search saves expensive resource time. And, its efficient open architecture makes archived data easily exported or migrated.

The eGovernance Cloud requires no administration, resulting in reduced IT overhead and cost. Redundant storage and backup protect data integrity.

With a low fixed fee, the eGovernance Cloud is comparable in cost to Microsoft Archiving with its per user fees. It incorporates a more sophisticated, easy to use, plain language search engine and superior eDiscovery capabilities. Users perform search and export operations in one half to one quarter of the time required by other systems.

eGovernance Cloud vs. Microsoft 365 eDiscovery

Microsoft provides multiple features within the Office 365, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft 365 Business packages. However, these features are tiered to the Microsoft Licensing levels. Thus, they may not provide uniform coverage across different license types within the organization.

Many organizations choose to license their Microsoft subscriptions based on job functions or requirements, providing email only accounts to some internal and external users and web only accounts to non-office staff. This can leave half the workforce without coverage for retention or formal eDiscovery.

The eGovernance Cloud provides uniform coverage across all Microsoft licensing levels. This allows organizations to provide discovery services for the entire organization. At the same time, they can deploy retention policies for data generated by basic enterprise and business licensing levels.

The Real Cost of eDiscovery

Too often, the cost of eDiscovery is assessed as the monetary value of the solution. Or in the case of Microsoft Office 365, the inclusive cost of a functional solution. More accurately, the predominant cost driver of eDiscovery is TIME.

Individuals performing discovery searches are typically in legal and compliance positions. These command higher salaries and therefore result in higher time costs associated with processing discovery requests.

The eGovernance Cloud enables personnel to effectively manage the organization’s discovery of electronic records. Users respond to eDiscovery requests rapidly and efficiently. They easily search, review, and reduce the content produced to just the relevant records more efficiently than with many competitive solutions.

Microsoft provides exceptional eDiscovery capabilities in its advanced eDiscovery tools offered through its E5/A5/G5 licensing levels. But these advanced features also come with the time cost of reindexing all identified discovery scope data prior to initiating any type of assessment.    Depending on the scope, this can add hours to the process of identifying and conducting initial validation searches.

In contrast, eGovernance Cloud eDiscovery keeps ALL data indexed and ready to search with no re-indexing. Auditors simply plug in the search criteria and get results almost instantaneously.  

This allows them to perform quick pre-searches of information before they conduct a formal eDiscovery case or determine what content is available before getting too far into the process.

The result is that valuable professional time can be minimized while still providing crucial discovery information.

Data and System Integrity

The eGovernance Cloud is hosted in Microsoft Azure. This provide all the safeguards, protection, and compliance certifications of a truly enterprise data center. It also ensures data protection through encryption, data compartmentalization, and backups.

eGovernance is driven by iPro Advanced eDiscovery and Analytics technology and managed by the eMazzanti eCare service. eCare provides 24×7 monitoring and management of the service including:

• • Automated patch management
  • Automated server refreshes
  • Daily data physical backups

eGovernance is fully managed by qualified iPro/eMazzanti administrators who provide proactive assessment of scheduled processes and ensure data accessibility. This results in:

• • Elimination of privilege user caused data loss (compliance)
  • Audited and authorized change control
  • Zero risk of data loss due to misconfiguration
  • Consistent availability of services when and if you need them.
  • Discovery assistance to help deal with critical and sensitive requests

Why eGovernance

Organizations save immensely in systems and storage costs when not having to factor in hardware replacement budgets. Add to that the cost of fixing, maintaining, and installing additional infrastructure. Then, consider these benefits:

• • Increased Security:
  • The Azure-based eGovernance Cloud lives in a secure datacenter with SOCS-2 compliance. It provides not only a physically secure environment, but data secured through encryption at rest and in transit.

• • Disaster Recovery:
    With Azure data center redundancy and automatic failover, organizations ensure that their systems continue to function in the event of hardware failures and even site outages.

• • Immediate Scalability:
    The Cloud allocates systems, ram, CPU time and disk storage on demand without the need for a team of skilled systems specialists onsite. Expensive resources that sit idle until required need not be acquired.

• • Availability:
    The cloud provides availability from just about any location with an internet connection and delivers 24X7 access to resources.

eGovernance is powered by iPRO, the leaders in discovery and litigation evidence support. Thus, business leaders move forward with confidence when migrating legacy archiving systems to this powerful solution.

Migrate Legacy Archiving Systems Painlessly

The migration experts at eMazzanti Technologies understand the challenges of migrating data from legacy email archiving solutions. They also know from decades of experience the advantages and disadvantages of moving it to the cloud. Through hundreds of legacy and Microsoft 365 migrations and years of working with clients of all sizes, we have streamlined the migration process.

Regardless of your current archiving system, we will help you extract a complete, defensible data set. We know the roadblocks, and we have the tools and expertise to overcome them, ensuring a smooth migration to the eMazzanti/iPro eGovernance Cloud.

Review the advantages of moving to the eGovernance Cloud.

The post Reduce costs by moving legacy archives to eGovernance cloud appeared first on eGovernance.