Notable Articles in E-Discovery January 2014
/Discovery Difficulties Presented by Cloud Computing (J. Michael Nolan III, National Law Review)
"In the age of cloud computing, electronically stored information (“ESI”) is no longer stored exclusively on physical drives or Facebook. Dropbox and Google Drive are programs (“apps”) that provide cloud storage services. A user can upload files to reserved space on a server from any computer, smartphone, or tablet connected to the Internet. The stored data can be synchronized and downloaded to the user’s other devices. Individual users get limited storage space for free, and higher limits are available on a pay-as-you-go basis. Apple’s “App Store” and Google’s “Google Play” store for Android devices show that Dropbox and Google Drive are among the top free downloadable apps for smartphones. (Microsoft Skydrive, Apple iCloud, and Amazon Cloud are other popular cloud computing services.)"
EDRM UTBMS eDiscovery Code Set Calculator - eDiscovery Best Practices (Doug Austin, eDiscovery Daily Blog)
"This workbook would certainly be useful for tracking eDiscovery costs according to the UTBMS codes, especially for hourly billed activities. It’s not a spreadsheet for estimating costs based on estimated data volumes but rather estimated hours spent by key staff on each phase of discovery. You can download this calculator individually or a zip file containing all four calculators here."
Encryption challenges move to the cloud ( John Moore, The Business of Federal Technology)
"Data encryption is not a new issue for federal agencies. Protecting content in transit and at rest has been a long-running concern, but the difference today is the cloud. The act of housing applications and data in cloud environments raises a new set of data encryption and key management considerations.
Federal agencies are beginning to explore those issues, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology published a report in September titled "Cryptographic Key Management Issues and Challenges in Cloud Services.""
How Many Documents in a Gigabyte? An Updated Answer to that Vexing Question (John Tredennick, E-Discovery Search Blog)
"Including all files gets us awfully close to 5,000 documents per gigabyte, which was the lower range of the industry estimates I found. If you pull out the EML files, the number drops to 3,594.39, which is midway between our 2011 estimate (2,500) and 5.000 documents per gigabyte.
Which is the right number for you? That depends on the type of files you have and what you are trying to estimate. What I can say is that for the types of office files typically seen in a review, the number isn’t 10,000 or anything close. We use a figure closer to 3,000 for our estimates."
Technology: To image, or not to image, that is the question (Gareth Evans & Danielle Serbin, Inside Counsel)
"To image, or not to image, that is the question.
Unlike Hamlet’s decision, contemplating whether to make an image is rarely a matter of life and death. Nevertheless, it can be very important.
A “forensic,” “mirror” or “physical” image — all three terms are used — is an exact copy of a storage device, replicating all of its data bit for bit, including all active files and the remnants of “deleted” files. When a file is deleted, it is not actually erased, but the space that it occupied becomes “unallocated” space, i.e., space that can be overwritten with new data. Until unallocated space is overwritten with new data, it may contain deleted files or fragments that can be retrieved using forensic techniques. Similarly, “slack” space — the space between the end of a file and the end of the disk cluster in which it is stored—can hold fragments of “deleted” files."
Six eDiscovery Predictions for 2014, Part One - eDiscovery Trends & Part Two - (Doug Austin, eDiscovery Daily Blog)
"It’s that time of year, where people make predictions for the coming year for all sorts of things, including electronic discovery trends for the coming year."