In-House E-Discovery Technology Invokes the Cloud

A recent Harris Interactive-Kroll Ontrack survey found that 86 percent of Fortune 1000 corporations and medium-to-large law firm respondents “insource” some aspect of e-discovery.

Striking the right balance between in-house and outsourced provider-based services can be difficult. In an outsourced model, service providers allow organizations to concentrate on core business functions or the merits of the case. Insourcing achieves more control, but the organization’s staff is responsible for maintaining and operating the systems in a defensible manner.

Any organization considering in-house e-discovery technologies should consider the status of its existing infrastructure and likely future litigation demands. E-discovery response teams should analyze their strengths and weaknesses before deciding whether a task should be insourced.

Use of cloud-based technologies is growing. Presently, according to the survey, approximately 46 percent of companies and 37 percent of law firms indicate comfort with storing data or conducting e-discovery in the cloud. Two fundamental concerns about discovery in the cloud remain: data security and privacy.

Legal and IT teams can mitigate these concerns by doing their homework before entering into any cloud-based service agreement. Inquire as to the provider’s storage capacity and the location of the data, the underlying technology infrastructure, data-center physical security, user profiles and authentication methods, and monitoring and penetration testing protocols.

Cloud-based solutions must be designed to meet the needs of the organization, at the same time they provide the level of security required by clients, ethics rules and IT managers.