Emergence of E-Discovery
Being prepared, after having the right controls in place, and keeping exact audit trails are become very critical to identify, analyze and preserve relevant data. The drastic changes are in the manner as India has been the biggest promising hub of network and mobile. So there is an opportunity light at the end of the tunnel as e-discovery will bring the changes in each and every field. E-discovery a decade ago was a manual process. But in current scenario the new software tools give organizations an automated powerful solution. One of the latest shifts in e-discovery is the larger-scale embracing of video conferencing and collaboration tools. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more organizations and individuals worked remotely on network. Mainly the documentation did not need reviewers sitting in close proximity could be hosted over platforms such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Virtual managed reviews have become a more popular trend that may stay as a practice. The emerged issues which can be recently seen are like cyber crime and this will enhance the chances of establishing e-discovery.
An organisation should be wise to choose the e-discovery solution, which are easy to use and integrated well with your structure. This refers that a number of people might be implicated in finding and collecting data with the help of large systems where data is stored and has access to retrieve it.
Definition of E-Discovery
Electronic discovery or e Discovery is termed as a form of digital investigation that processes to find evidence in email, business communications and other data that could be used in litigation or criminal proceedings. The implementation of various searches eventually reduces the volume of material and also reduces the cost and time of an investigation. The evidence from electronic discovery could include data from email accounts, instant messages, social profiles, online documents, databases, internal applications, digital images, website content and any other electronic information. It can be conducted online on the network and offline on a specific computer. E-discovery is considered as a procedure by which parties involved in a legal case preserve, collect, review, and exchange information in electronic formats for the purpose of using it as evidence.
How Does E-Discovery work??
Most of the e-discovery law firms perform an investigation using their own procedures. The process of e-discovery is commonly followed by legal firms, against the third parties (primarily the opposite parties). The procedures and technologies around e-discovery are quite difficult due to the vast stock of stored data.. On the following basis, then diagram given below, explains the process of e-discovery. The process of E-discovery begins when a lawsuit appears imminent, up to when digital evidence is presented in court.
These e-discovery stages were created to improve collection, preservation and presentation of potentially relevant information.
Importance /Advantages of E-Discovery
Organizations must also be aware of the way e-discovery works so that they can preserve data while investigating inappropriate data access and privacy issues in security system. An audit trail is required in many of the regulatory standards that oversee private data storage and processing which helps us to identify who accessed data and at what time. E-discovery would also help to resolve whether any inappropriate data access was due to an insider threat or system compromise. If the system was compromised, then the organization should consider investigating further to identify the weakness and contain the threats. The other benefits of E-discovery are as follows:
- Provides competitive edge to focus globally and that is the fact that it is universally accepted.
- Easy to store and carry whether the accuracy of computers is that the date and time can be detected
- Exchanging the information in electronic formats and reducing the cost of printing, therefore making it more eco–friendly.
- Easy to access to the computer anywhere and at any time. All expenses are transparent and simple to understand.
- Recovering the deleted information
- Brought new technological opportunities