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Emerging Data Sources Discovery & Governance
Discovery and governance for productivity platforms, collaboration tools, chat and messaging, social media, and other cloud-based applications.
An array of emerging data sources, including cloud-based collaboration platforms like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, collaboration tools such as Slack and Teams, chat and instant messaging applications, and social-media have become standard inside organizations around the globe. Driven in large part by increased remote work and the need to collaborate remotely, these emerging data sources provide more dynamic and asynchronous collaboration capabilities with entirely new functionality to link to live documents and store multiple historical versions. Yet many companies are unable to control the growth, management and discovery of these new data formats. To compound this problem, third parties typically host the data, but often lack standard export workflows or preservation policies, making it difficult to obtain, quantify or assess. And, should the data be relevant for a legal or regulatory matter, few e-discovery applications enable legal teams to organize or review it in context with other information.
Accelerated Cloud Data
The shift to cloud data architecture over the past 20 years has fundamentally changed where and how data is created and managed.
Cloud data platforms have increased the volume of data being created, the variety of systems available, and the velocity of change occurring to data forms and formats. In addition to greater adoption, 2020’s shift to remote work increased visibility into the type of data generated in emerging data sources and its importance to all aspects of governance, risk, and compliance workstreams. Legacy eDiscovery systems and workflows are straining to meet the challenges emerging data sources introduce.
Practical Solutions for Emerging Data Challenges
Discovery and Governance for Emerging Digital Sources
To address this problem, FTI Technology provides expert services and proprietary technology that can pull data from a wide variety of emerging data sources, visually organize it in a way that is easy to understand and integrate into the organization’s choice of platform as part of a regular e-discovery process, investigation or regulatory response.
FTI Technology also provides services to help organizations proactively organize and better manage and protect digital sources as part of a comprehensive information governance program. As a whole, these solutions are aimed at giving organizations faster and more actionable insights from all across the emerging data source universe.
Quickly Collect, Review and Produce
FTI Technology partners with clients to develop a strategic and economic approach to collecting, processing, analyzing and reviewing the full spectrum of emerging data sources. Organizations can view this data alongside more traditional electronically stored information to quickly understand and act upon the content for legal matters, investigations or regulatory responses. FTI Technology professionals utilize defensible tools and methodologies to ensure that even the most complex new data source is handled in a forensically sound manner.
Spotlight on Chat Data
Chat is perhaps the most critical and challenging emerging data source to assess.
With the shift to remote work and the increasing adoption of collaboration platforms, chat is now the primary mechanism for communication. As a result, chat messages and other artifacts are of high importance during investigations or for legal and regulatory responses. And while the systems for collecting chat messages are improving, the process often results in difficult-to-parse and review formats. FTI Technology’s chat data solution gives legal teams the power to connect directly to the source and transform indecipherable communication logs into easy-tounderstand and review conversations. This allows teams to integrate messages from a variety of messaging platforms into a streamlined workflow in their chosen e-discovery platform and significantly reduce review time - while enabling deeper insights into chat data.
Better Manage, Protect and Remediate Digital Sources
Beyond reactive matters, FTI Technology provides information governance services to help organizations proactively manage and protect emerging digital sources. FTI teams can help organizations map new data types, understand data size, age and content, then act in a way to best serve the company going forward. Using industry-leading software and proven methodologies the FTI team enables organizations to tackle a wide variety of IG challenges for emerging data sources, including:
- Storing sensitive data, including client information and proprietary intellectual property
- Securing data against internal and external threats
- Managing data in compliance with regulations ranging from HIPAA to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
- Identifying and disposing of old or redundant data
- Migrating data to cloud applications (i.e. Microsoft 365, Google Workspace) and remediating information within legacy systems
- Updating litigation hold, preservation and e-discovery processes and technology to encompass new data sources
- Ensuring proprietary data remains secure when employees leave, as companies acquire and divest assets, or in other similar circumstances
- Managing change within the organization and providing effective communications and training for new processes
Flexible Engagement Options
FTI Technology’s emerging digital sources discovery and governance services are tailored to meet specific client needs. Whether you need a trusted advisor to assist with digital messaging data for one legal matter, or an on-site secondment to perform a complete transformational service, FTI Technology can right size the approach for you.
Trusted Global Leaders in Information Governance, E-discovery and Investigations
FTI Technology has over a decade of experience in information governance, e-discovery, data security and investigations. FTI Technology is comprised of J.D.s, MBAs and practitioners with a wide range of legal, technology and security certifications. These include CISSP, CIPP/US, EnCE, ACEDS, AccessData Certified Examiner, Exterro Platform Administrator, Relativity Certified Administrator, and Ringtail Administrator certification. Our team can develop defensible documentation and has the credentials and experience to testify in court about the methods used for any information governance project.
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