What is the best way to use email archiving systems for e-discovery? Earlier this year, I co-wrote a whitepaper on the topic (sponsored by LiveOffice), and on Wednesday I will present a companion webinar.

The gist is that email archiving can be an incredibly useful tool to manage legal risks and enable more effective discovery of message content. Electronic discovery is growing at an amazing clip, and most cases now include email messages - in fact, email is estimated to be 60% to 70% of all legal discovery in the United States today!

At the same time, companies are challenged with ineffective or un-enforced retention and litigation hold policies and rampant “underground archiving” of messages in offline PST files. And to make matters worse, the 2006 revisions to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure drastically shortened the amount of time companies have to describe and produce electronic records! It’s simply impossible to begin recovering messages from backup tapes in response to legal requests - the only way forward is a proactive strategy based on email archiving.

If this piques your interest, grab a copy of that whitepaper, join me on Wednesday for the webinar, and check out some of my other email-related content. I’ll also be speaking on the topic at Storage Decisions in San Francisco, and would be happy to respond to your emailed questions any time!

My webinar on building a business case for email archiving was very well-attended, so I was not able to get to everyone during the question and answer section. Since the questions were really excellent, I thought I would include them (and my responses) here.

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Interested in e-discovery? Read my new article on SearchSecurity.com, titled Easing e-discovery preparation by mapping enterprise data.

“Most information security pros have a handle on the major data types found in their environments, but they also know that there is a whole lot more data lurking around the edges. These unknown data types can include documents used by individuals, or whole applications owned by departments that have quietly become essential to the business.

Most of the time, focusing on the squeaky wheels is an acceptable strategy; if there’s no “squeak” then there’s no need to worry. But when it comes to litigation, and especially managing the electronic discovery process, what you don’t know can hurt you.”