Yesterday we received a Litigation Hold request. For those of you who don't know, this is the order given as part of a lawsuit ordering us to take steps to preserve data that could be used as part of the Discovery process of the suit. This is something that is becoming more and more common these days.
Our department has been pretty lucky so far. Since I started here in late 2003 this is the first Litigation Hold request we've had to deal with. We've had a few "public records requests" come through which are handled similarly, but this is the first one involving data that may be introduced under sworn testimony.
This morning we had an article pointed out to us by the Office of Finance Management at the state. WWU is a State agency, so OFM is in our chain of bureaucracy.
Case Law/Rule Changes Thrust Electronic Document Discovery into the Spotlight.
It's an older PDF, but it does give a high level view of the sorts of things we should be doing when these requests come in. One of the things that we don't have any processes for are the sequestration of held data and chain of custody preservation. We are now building those.
Guideline #4 has the phrase, "Consultants are particularly useful in this role," referring to overseeing the holding process and standing up before a court to testify that the data was handled correctly. This is very true! Trained professionals are the kind of people to know the little nuances that hostile lawyers can use to invalidate gathered evidence. Someone who has done a lot of reading and been to a few SANS classes is not that person.
Just because it is possible to self represent yourself in court as your own lawyer, doesn't make it a good idea. In fact, it generally is a very bad idea. Same thing applies to the above phrase. You want someone who knows what the heck they're doing when they climb up there onto the witness stand.
This is going to be an interesting learning experience.
Our department has been pretty lucky so far. Since I started here in late 2003 this is the first Litigation Hold request we've had to deal with. We've had a few "public records requests" come through which are handled similarly, but this is the first one involving data that may be introduced under sworn testimony.
This morning we had an article pointed out to us by the Office of Finance Management at the state. WWU is a State agency, so OFM is in our chain of bureaucracy.
Case Law/Rule Changes Thrust Electronic Document Discovery into the Spotlight.
It's an older PDF, but it does give a high level view of the sorts of things we should be doing when these requests come in. One of the things that we don't have any processes for are the sequestration of held data and chain of custody preservation. We are now building those.
Guideline #4 has the phrase, "Consultants are particularly useful in this role," referring to overseeing the holding process and standing up before a court to testify that the data was handled correctly. This is very true! Trained professionals are the kind of people to know the little nuances that hostile lawyers can use to invalidate gathered evidence. Someone who has done a lot of reading and been to a few SANS classes is not that person.
Just because it is possible to self represent yourself in court as your own lawyer, doesn't make it a good idea. In fact, it generally is a very bad idea. Same thing applies to the above phrase. You want someone who knows what the heck they're doing when they climb up there onto the witness stand.
This is going to be an interesting learning experience.