In today’s digital world, business communications are evolving, and organizations are adapting to new modern work environments. Historically, data was located primarily on in-house workstations and servers; today, much of it is in the cloud within enterprise systems for everything from email and productivity solutions, like Microsoft® 365 and Google™ Suite, to collaboration platforms, such as Slack® and Microsoft® Teams. As teams move to hybrid work models, employees are adopting these new cloud-based applications as their main method of communications. Using these platforms, employees now attach larger files as web links to SharePoint® or OneDrive® resources in their email communications and chat messages. Legal teams are now tasked with collecting and preserving data from these platforms in preparation for litigation, investigations and data retention regulations.
One of the biggest reasons for the growth in cloud usage is the growing popularity of collaboration apps for communication. Already growing in popularity before the COVID-19 pandemic, their use skyrocketed when the pandemic forced so many organizations into remote work. The number of Teams daily users has grown from 2 million back in 2017 to more than 145 million by mid-2021.
eDiscovery practitioners are very familiar with handling traditional email attachments when it comes to eDiscovery. However, when Microsoft added the ability to attach “modern attachments” (hyperlinks to files) a new set of challenges emerged. Now employees can send links to their OneDrive account or SharePoint system and not send the actual file. This method is often used when a file is too large to send through Outlook®. The recipient of the email simply clicks on the hyperlink inside the email and accesses the specific file from OneDrive or SharePoint. These types of attachments using links can be problematic for both regulatory data retention requirements and for eDiscovery.
EnCase Information Assurance and modern attachments
OpenText™ EnCase Information Assurance CE 22.2 enhances the ability to collect from these new data sources and displays the data collected in an easy-to-view evidence browser. This release addresses the needs of organizations and government agencies to effectively collect from modern attachments and preserve the parent-child relationships in a scalable, easy-to-view interface.
This modern approach to data collection empowers legal teams to
- Collect modern email attachments that are links to content in OneDrive or SharePoint.
- Preserve critical parent-child relationships in easy-to-navigate family tree view.
- Gain valuable early insights into data and view related documents and files easily.
OpenText EnCase Information Assurance CE 22.2 collects and preserves modern email attachments preserving the content shared in these embedded links. These new capabilities provide legal teams with the tools they need for litigation readiness and reduce the risk of sanctions for failing to collect and preserve potentially relevant data associated with a matter. While other eDiscovery solutions treat modern attachments as simply links, EnCase Information Assurance CE 22.2 provides the ability to collect and preserve the critical data that resides in the links and not just a URL. By handling modern attachments in a comparable manner to traditional email attachments, legal teams can preserve evidence, see the related communications and documents and build a more informed data-driven case strategy.
Scalable visibility with fewer clicks
EnCase Information Assurance maintains the critical parent-child relationships in the new family tree view with the enhanced evidence browser. Reducing the clicks to get to the data by opening the entire expanded family tree when the parent item or any of its children is clicked on. Easily view the collected data, associated documents and attachments. Gain an information advantage with scalable evidence viewing across multiple data sets and discover all potentially relevant documents and emails including both traditional and modern attachments to make more informed decisions faster.
Learn how EnCase Information Assurance enables legal teams to collect from anywhere, anytime with forensic precision and gain early insight into the data. For more information, visit us at security.opentext.com
