As data volumes grow, it's increasingly difficult to locate relevant data. Data must be retained longer, and storage users cannot be counted upon to intuitively locate documents, spreadsheets or other data. This is a problem when dealing with electronic discovery (e-discovery) requests that impose a legal obligation to locate relevant data in a timely manner or face fines and possibly adverse judgments. Today, e-discovery tools provide powerful search capabilities that can quickly process and index billions of files based on keywords and other common metadata. The tools can also present search results in forms that are easy to understand and often deliver results in a form that is directly compatible with litigation management tools.
As with any type of search tool, it's important to test the product in your own environment before purchase. Discovery tools are useless if they can't locate your data and deliver it for litigation. Now that you've reviewed the essential issues involved in any compliance product purchase, this segment will cover the considerations that are most specific to e-discovery tool purchases. After that, you'll find a series of product specifications that will help make on-the-spot comparisons between vendors like FAST, Kazeon Systems, Index Engines, StoredIQ and more.
Test your search criteria and metadata. Use the search function to perform discovery drills and see that the tool will actually find mail, documents or other files based on your queries. For example, try locating all Word memos related to a recent company project or initiative. The search tests should return useful and relevant results based on common criteria, such as keywords, sender, file dates and even the context within documents, spreadsheets, email and instant message logs.
Evaluate the search scope and supported file types. A key attribute of discovery tools is their ability to process a wide variety of file types stored on a range of storage hardware across the enterprise. Before purchasing a discovery tool, verify that the tool will work with file types that are most relevant and important to your organisation, such as Word documents, Outlook .pst files, database files, images and .pdfs. Also, consider the search scope of the tool and ensure that it can search storage systems, servers, desktops/workstations, and even corporate laptops or remote sites to locate files of interest.
Consider search performance. As data volumes grow and corporate information proliferates into the fringes of the organisation (e.g. laptop or remote users), discovery tools must be able to respond to discovery requests in ever-shorter timeframes. Since failing to meet discovery requests can result in fines or judgments, performance can also have an important financial impact for your company. Note the time required to perform each request. Some tools can process terabytes of storage per day.
Evaluate any e-discovery storage requirements. The results of your searches need to be stored somewhere. Search results and indexes take anywhere from 4% to 10% of your total file storage utilisation. Smaller organisations or businesses operating with very little extra storage capacity may get blindsided by unforeseen storage needs.
Consider logging and reporting features. Discovery tools should include logging and reporting features that identify the individuals making requests, criteria used for each search and the results obtained from each search. The tool should also track the disposition of any results, noting any files that are moved, held or copied, establishing a chain of custody that can demonstrate appropriate compliance with discovery requests and verify the authenticity of documents or other files.
Consider integration with litigation tools. Discovery tools should interface with standard litigation tools, such as ProLaw from Thomson Elite, AXS-One Case Management or LexisNexis. This allows counsel to organise and process the results. In many cases, discovery tools will export to some common text, image or other file formats.
Evaluate any network overhead. Pay particular attention to the discovery tool's deployment. Discovery products that rely on agents or other software deployed across the infrastructure can cause interoperability and maintenance issues. Agents and network crawlers can add unwanted network traffic overhead, placing additional load on the network and possibly slowing performance-sensitive applications. Discovery tools that avoid the use of agents and network crawlers are preferable.
Consider support for offline tape indexing. Organisations that rely on long-term archival tape storage should consider a discovery tool that includes offline tape indexing features. This type of function is available in appliances like those from Index Engines, allowing archive tape contents to be processed into indexes with metadata. Without this type of feature, tapes would need to be restored first and then searched, but this feature can read and index tapes without needing to actually restore the content.
