FEATURE EDITORIAL

Lawsuit Settlement Opted Over Email Recovery and Search Costs

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) govern the conduct of all civil actions brought in the U.S. Federal district courts. Although they have been in place for a long time, FRCP amendments came into effect December 1, 2006. These rules require companies to retain all corporate records, including email and data compilations, and make them available to the court as soon as there is a reasonable expectation that a lawsuit might occur, without the court having to specifically make a discovery request. We are now approaching the one-year anniversary of the amendments introduced last year.

A recent survey of professionals directly involved in legal discovery shows that a significant number of businesses have been negatively impacted by the challenges of e-Discovery. In fact, one-fifth of the professionals say their business has settled a lawsuit to avoid the cost of recovering and searching through electronic documents such as email. The survey, conducted by iTracks for Fortiva, an on-demand email archiving provider, also showed that a majority of businesses are now actively taking steps to reduce risk and meet FRCP requirements by improving their e-Discovery processes. "As more and more lawsuits focus on electronic evidence, the cost - and risk - of being unprepared for e-Discovery keeps going up," says Eric Goodwin, CEO of Fortiva. "It's clear that in the year since the amended FRCP went into effect, the majority of businesses have recognized that fact and are doing something about it. There's still a long way to go, but these results are very positive and they indicate that most companies are on the right path."

The amended FRCP states that all email is discoverable, and that parties to a lawsuit must meet within 99 days of a civil action being launched for a meet and confer session to disclose what information will be produced and the format in which it must be presented. As a result, businesses need to know where all emails are stored and for how long, and they need to ensure that they can access those emails and present them to opposing counsel in a reasonable timeframe. The new rules also require businesses to be prepared to enforce a litigation hold on any email that might be relevant to a potential case, meaning that those emails cannot be deleted until the issue is resolved.

Based on the results, nearly half (47 percent) of respondents do not agree that their legal team can effectively review relevant email in the 99-day window before the meet and confer session. To address this, 51 percent say they have implemented, or are planning to implement technology that allows them to easily search and review email. Similarly, more than one-third of businesses (36.7 percent) are already enforcing a formal retention policy for email, while another 40 percent are currently in the planning stage to enforce a formal policy. Surprisingly, while 68 percent of respondents face at least one litigation hold each year, just 37 percent have a formal litigation hold process in place. Once again, this appears to be changing as another 36 percent of respondents are currently planning to create and enforce a formal litigation hold process. Of those respondents who were familiar with the costs of litigation, more than half (51 percent) claimed the average cost of litigation (excluding settlement costs) was over US$200,000, with 8 percent putting the average cost over US$1 million.

EDITOR'S NOTE: There is an upcoming Webinar on Email Archiving and e-Discovery for 2008 happening on December 5. Michael Osterman, President of Osterman Research, will review findings from Osterman Research's recently published report, Messaging Archiving Trends, 2007-2010. Also on hand will be executives from LiveOffice, MessageOne, and Sonian to share their insights and perspectives on messaging archiving today, along with key strategies to address e-Discovery issues.

Email Content Policy Management

Postini, a provider of on-demand communications security and compliance solutions recently announced new content policy management capabilities to its Email Security service, including protection for social security and credit card numbers. The company says that at no additional cost, Postini customers now gain greater flexibility and control to manage their communications compliance and security policies. "Companies of all sizes are seeking to reduce email security and compliance risk" says Scott Petry, founder of Postini and director of product management at Google, "They are seeking to encrypt email communications automatically based on message content, prevent sensitive content from leaving the company via email and have visibility into policy violations. Postini's innovation in content analysis and disposition simplifies the process of managing communications compliance policies for our customers. We are continuing to deliver on the promise of SaaS (software as a service) as the most cost and time effective way for large and small enterprises to manage their communications."

Postini's content policy management framework is available as a part of the Postini standalone service and also as part of Google Apps Premier Edition. Content policy management is expected to be extended in the future to additional communication protocols, including Instant Messaging and HTTP. At the time of the announcement, Postini also publicized significant new functionality for Email Security and Message Archiving services.

GoldMail Unveils Voiceover Messaging Technology

Earlier this month GoldMail, a developer of voiceover messaging technology, announced the official launch and introduction of its flagship voiceover messaging product set, which combines voice and visuals into a single, format that makes messages more memorable than traditional text-based messaging. The company believes it represents a new category called voiceover messaging. GoldMail gives people the ability to record their voice over visuals and text - from photos to documents to graphics to presentations - and share them through any existing email program or by posting them online to any Web page or blog.

GoldMail says that text-only messages have value, but limitations like impersonal tone, misplaced emphasis, or misused words that often lead to misunderstanding. "Voiceover messaging signals the next iteration of messaging which - in the urgency to communicate with anyone, anywhere, anytime - has become a predominantly text-based communication format lacking the true meaning and understanding that only the human voice can communicate," believes Guy Longworth, CEO of GoldMail. "The clarity and emotion communicated through speech is what makes a GoldMail voiceover message resonate with people."

Business Application
While the product applies to consumers, the company thinks businesses can leverage GoldMail to network with others, enhance sales and online marketing campaigns, assist in training and tutorials, and improve internal corporate communications. GoldMail Pro provides 10 minutes of recording time per message, 2GB of storage, along with reporting and viewing capabilities. The company says, "…in the free version, there is a small, unobtrusive advertising component at the conclusion of each GoldMail. GoldMail Pro has no ads, unlimited views, full reporting and costs US$9.95 a month or US$99.95 a year."

MESSAGING NEWS CASE STUDY BRIEF:

Teneros and C.V. Starr: High Availability and Disaster Recovery

Teneros recently announced the second generation of its Application Continuity Appliances for Microsoft Exchange. The Teneros "V"elocity series capitalizes on virtualization technology to expand Teneros' continuity protection from the Exchange server and data to the Exchange ecosystem, including mobile messaging Active Directory, and data backup/restore. The new "V"elocity series platform also boosts the range of Exchange servers protected with models supporting 50 to 2,000 mailboxes and 90 Gigabytes to multiple Terabytes of storage.

Insurance company C.V. Starr has already purchased eight "V"elocity high-availability and disaster recovery appliances to support 600 mailboxes at five offices spread across three countries on two continents. "We were initially attracted to the Teneros appliance for its simple installation and Teneros' remote, "hands-free IT" which includes appliance monitoring, update, and maintenance, freeing our internal IT resources for other projects," notes John Harte, director of IT operations. "We then discovered the additional protection for our Blackberry Enterprise Server, which is an added bonus offered by the "V"elocity series appliances and extremely important to us since we depend on BES for our mobile communications."

"When the Exchange ecosystem fails, including email and mobile messaging, businesses are crippled," says Steve Lewis, Teneros CEO. "Our new "V"elocity series continuity appliances offer enhanced protection for business-critical communications applications and data that fuel businesses worldwide. And, the design of our new appliances allows our customers to protect their Exchange ecosytems today and easily migrate to Exchange 2007 tomorrow."

We welcome your ideas and your news for Messaging Newswire’s News & Trends in Email Security. Let us know what you think by sending your comments to editorial@messagingnews.com. Written or compiled by Stephanie Jordan. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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