Put Your Data in a WORM Hole

When you have to comply with a government regulation like the SEC Rule described in last night's tip, or have a another pressing reason to ensure that data is stored indefinitely without being altered, consider investing in a WORM device. WORM stands for Write Once, Read Many. Optical discs like a CD-Rs are WORM media, but WORM drives also exist. A SanDisk memory vault device will prevent the deletion of any file which has already been saved to it. GreenTec's WORM drives ensure all data is read only by the protection in the hardware itself. No matter what operating system is used and what access controls are placed on data, it cannot be overwritten. EMC also manufacturers Centera drives which serve the same function.

Data storage devices can fall into hands other than those that originally acquired them to archive records. Drives are often in short supply and get repurposed. If a court order only allows a firm to retain a single copy of deposition transcripts or other documents after the settlement of a case, you want to guarantee the data doesn't get deleted inadvertently at some point. WORM drives may increasingly become part of standard electronic post-discovery due diligence for long term storage.

Get eDiscovery Cheap with Walmart

Today Exterro hosted a webinar on Reducing E-Discovery Costs Without Sacrificing Defensibility. Follow the link to view the webinar on their site. The webinar was particularly interesting because the Senior Associate General Counsel for Electronic Discovery at Walmart, Aaron Crews, was one of the commentators. His thoughts reflect the approach to electronic discovery at the world's largest company - a specialist in providing discounted products. Crews observed that to achieve cost savings without increasing risk, it's necessary to build a process for every case - must be enough space to modify a process so that it applies to a given a case. He said that following a cookie cutter approach was a mistake because one must act based on the issues in a case, and figure out what specific steps need to be taken. An eDiscovery process which is not customizable, may not be defensible.

Crews also remarked that documenting the steps taken during electronic discovery brings one "90 % of way" to reasonableness, so long as the process itself is not wholly derelict.

Focusing on proportional eDiscovery parameters under FRCP 26(b)(1) is a means to save a lot of money and get merits based outcomes faster in Crews' opinion. He also noted that the surest way to get an objection to a discovery request shot down in court is to tell a judge flatly that production will be too expensive or too technically difficult. In Walmart's view, it's imporant to come prepared by having tested proposed keywords or sampling the data sets for suggested custodians, so you can argue in a hearing that certain requests will not be fruitful.

Crews also observed that most organiations have a preferred communication pathway, whether it's email , a collaboration site for conversation, or something else. In his belief it's very important to pick one pathway and stick with it. There must be real time documentation of the eDiscovery process, that records and channels the communications of tech, legal and other departments. Routinized meetings are a good way to make sure issues are addressed soon after they come up.

ISO files

Anyone who has spent time burning data to discs has dealt with ISO files. An ISO file is basically a copy of an optical disc. The 'ISO' refers to the International Organization for Standardization. ISO developed a specific standard ISO 9660 which allows different operating systems to exchange data. ISO files don't use the first 32 KB of a disc - this is referred to as the system area. This is reserved for data that consists of alternate file system descriptors. The beginning of the data area is followed by a volume descriptor set of 2 KB. This is in effect the header of the data, and always begins with 'CD001'.

An ISO file can be opened with file extraction software like 7-Zip.

ISO 9660 can only support files of more than 4 GB on DVDs with a fragmentation feature. Mac OS devices may not be able to deal with these fragmented files.