Are you still on the fence about upgrading to Enterprise Vault 10? Yet another reason to get the latest version of Enterprise Vault is that it may help your organization minimize litigation risks. Who doesn’t want to stay out of lawsuits and reduce litigation costs?
Enterprise Vault 10 can help your organization do so though its Data Classification Services technology. At its heart, Data Classification Services empowers organizations to establish more effective information governance procedures. Companies are able to better analyze and retain information that is significant or that must be kept – and nothing else.
Available initially for Microsoft Exchange Server, Data Classification Services intelligently analyzes content as email is archived into Enterprise Vault. Through established retention protocols, email is then tagged and characterized insomuch that it can be searched for and retrieved with greater efficiency. Depending on the content, categorized email will also be assigned a particular retention period. This will ensure the company maintains emails that must be kept for legal, regulatory or business purposes – and nothing else.
Enterprise Vault 10 is therefore at the heart of effective information governance. And effective information governance minimizes litigation risks. To better understand how this is accomplished, look no further than the E.I. du Pont de Nemours v. Kolon Industries decision issued two weeks ago by a Virginia-based federal court.
In du Pont, the plaintiff manufacturer defeated a sanctions motion due to its effective information governance procedures. The manufacturer implemented a document retention policy that typically kept emails from inactive employee accounts for 60 days, after which the emails were overwritten and deleted. The manufacturer also promulgated a course of action whereby the retention policy would be promptly suspended on the occurrence of litigation or other triggering event. This way, email build-up could be reduced until a litigation event required otherwise. Because the manufacturer followed reasonable, effective and good faith procedures, it decreased a stockpile of email and was still protected from court sanctions.
As the du Pont case shows, a company can get information governance right. By faithfully observing a reasonable records retention policy and then modifying aspects of that policy when required, a company can confidently delete superfluous data in a manner provided by law.
Coupling those procedures with Enterprise Vault 10 will only enhance the organization’s information governance. With Data Classification Services, Enterprise Vault 10 will help a company reduce its costs by decreasing email proliferation and by limiting the amount of potentially relevant information for possible future litigation. Simply put, Enterprise Vault will help an organization keep what it must keep – and nothing else.
