e-Discovery Processes and What You Need to Know About Business Emails

Therefore, the article does not refer to the concept of electronic discovery used in Anglo-American common law judicial regions, namely the process of collecting evidence prior to legal proceedings.

What is eDiscovery?

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Outside of Anglo-American judicial regions, e-Discovery generally refers to the process of localizing, sourcing, reviewing, and exchanging electronically stored information. Therefore, in this article, we are talking about the process of discovering electronic data in general rather than the legal procedure of eDiscovery as understood in the United States. Essentially, an e-Discovery process can include all tools and programs within a company's communication network.

In the context of business emails, both internal emails and emails sent to customers, suppliers, and business partners can be relevant to an e-Discovery process. Some emails may contain information that is legally relevant, and thus can be requested as evidence in civil or criminal cases.

Legacy Vacation Club's Information Technology General Manager Scott D. Zane uses a daily life example to illustrate the potentially significant importance of eDiscovery from the perspective of an IT professional: "My previous company got involved in some lawsuits. We had no archiving options. Most of the evidence discovery relied on email requests from a dozen employees. I spent nearly six months of my life collecting, indexing, and reviewing more PST files than I wanted to remember. It was painful, and I vowed it would never happen again."

How does an e-evidence detection process work with business emails?

This kind of eDiscovery process is not a common occurrence in everyday work life and is triggered by the need for information acquisition, for example, by the legal department of a company or an external party (e.g., their lawyer or tax auditor). The rapid finding, reviewing, and providing of data is especially important in cases of legal disputes, audits, or internal investigations, but can also be necessary in other situations. After the scope of such an eDiscovery process has been defined, individuals involved in the process must generate data related to the case. When it comes to emails, this requires searching through all of the company's emails digitally.

The conceptual EDRM model can help obtain a theoretical view of a potential eDiscovery process and its components. Although not all steps outlined in the model may be followed or steps may be carried out in a different order than outlined, the model still serves as a useful basis for discussion and analysis.

In cases involving business emails, who is typically involved in an eDiscovery process?

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First of all, this is obviously the IT manager - responsible for managing the email archiving solution and ensuring that authorized personnel such as the legal department or compliance officer can review the relevant data. These individuals can then use specific access rights granted for this situation to search email archives for the necessary information. The assigned individuals can also include people from outside the company, such as external auditors (lawyers, tax auditors, etc.). And rarely, but not uncommonly, company management may also be involved as a stakeholder in the process (for example, generally in cases of legal disputes).

What are the challenges of an eDiscovery process for business emails in your email management?

Implementing an eDiscovery process is not always a quick and simple matter, and the following challenges should be considered:

• The first challenge - time and effort spent searching for emails: The necessary content must be found quickly without spending excessive time and effort. With high email volumes, determining whether all relevant content has been found is usually difficult. Recall Scott Zane's quote from the second part of this article.
• The second challenge - integrity of emails: The integrity of emails is particularly important. A company must ensure that emails that are damaged or manipulated are not used, and it must be able to demonstrate this.
• The third challenge - data security: A company must ensure that third parties do not have unauthorized access to information. Not only commercial secrets but also personally identifiable information play a role in data confidentiality.

How can a professional email archiving solution help overcome these challenges?

In the context of an eDiscovery process involving business emails, an email archiving solution such as MailStore Server can help with the following features:

Effective search functionality:

• Quickly and easily search multiple email archives
• Search email attachments (e.g., Office documents, PDF files, etc.)
• Browse an archive using the familiar folder structure of your email client
• Adjust your queries using different search criteria
• Create search folders for recurring queries
• Option to analyze data: for example, how many emails were sent to which recipients?

Access and rights management:

• Special auditor user allowing external auditors to access the archive and search within it during the eDiscovery process

Compliance features:

• Integrity of all emails (even with large data volumes)
• Ability for managers to define storage policies allowing full control over the periods during which various email types are archived
• Integrated audit function for logging changes and events
• Legal Hold feature: When enabled, this feature ensures that data cannot be deleted by other users
• Selective deletion of specific emails, for example, emails containing personally identifiable information that may need to be deleted in accordance with Article 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation ("right to erasure")
• Fast export function in standard email formats (PST, EML and MSG) Optional: cryptographic signature, ensuring that exported files (EML or MSG) are protected against tampering

Practical example: eDiscovery process

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Imagine your lawyer needs to find and review a supplier's emails for a legal dispute, and access the email archive of a colleague who is not listed in the Accounts. Management has approved the access request.

To facilitate this access, temporary rights must be granted within MailStore Server, namely rights that the administrator can assign and later revoke in a subsequent stage.

When the lawyer accesses the data - as part of the audit - the Legal Hold feature is generally enabled in the email archiving solution MailStore Server. When Legal Hold is enabled, no emails can be deleted from the archive, regardless of how other user rights or storage policies are configured. This factor is particularly important if the reason for conducting the eDiscovery process is a legal dispute. In addition, all important events and actions related to the lawyer can be stored in an audit log. In accordance with compliance principles, a company can define which actions should be stored in the audit log.

The lawyer now has read-only access to the archived mailbox of the colleague who is no longer in the Accounts and can review it in their spare time. It is important not to forget that even IT managers cannot access other users' email archives during the e-evidence detection process.

The fast and simple search function provided by MailStore Server means that your colleague who is no longer in the Accounts can easily review their email archive. The search function also ensures that no information is missed.

In addition to the previously mentioned compliance features, another important point is the export function that allows the necessary content to be exported in common email formats (EML, MSG and PST). Digital signatures can be applied to EML or MSG format exports, which means that they remain protected against tampering even outside the archive. Export is a critical aspect of the lawyer's work, as it allows them to perform further evaluations and take additional steps. Export can also be important for third parties who need specific emails or documents sent via email, even if they are not granted direct access to the archive.

In conclusion:

The email archiving solution MailStore Server enables companies to overcome the challenges arising from an eDiscovery process. For this reason, we recommend MailStore Server as an essential and integral part of any company's internal email management policy.

In addition to the features that assist with an eDiscovery process, MailStore Server offers many more advantages.

Source: Email Management: eDiscovery Processes and Business Emails (mailstore.com)