The term eDiscovery or Electronic Discovery refers to that procedure of managing, preserving, and tracking litigation-relevant and forensic data, either within computer media such as computers or within cloud software.
This process stems from the need torecover sensitive data that has been lost or deleted, even maliciously, from a company's computer system.
In contrast to paper information, permanently deleting data in digital format is much more difficult, as they leave clearly discernible traces within computer systems even once they have been deleted.
Data is the most important asset of any company, think of how many are exchanged daily just via email.
To protect your business, you cannot afford the slightest mistake; you must play it by ear by choosing solutions that allow you to manage, store and retrieve data at any time if you need it.
The eDiscovery procedure is necessary if your company is required to retrieve sensitive employee data, but also in case of data breaches, cyber crime attacks, or to prove that your procedures are compliant with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
As you can imagine, it can affect more structured companies undergoing strict certifications, but also smaller ones.
Data retrieval workers are people with specific training in computer forensics, but there are platforms, such as Google Workspace or Hycu that have an eDiscovery system to save and archive all data automatically from the moment they are installed.
This way you can retrieve the information you need at any time quickly and securely
By setting the right retention rules for your entire domain, with eDiscovery you can recover almost any type of file such as:
Once you have identified and retrieved the data you seek, it is stored in an external infrastructure to be preserved, ensuring that the files are not altered.
The data is then tested for authenticity and to search for the source of the problem, whether it is data theft or data deletion from systems.
This phase is critical because it helps you understand what the weak points are within your business system.
Once identified, you can initiate a series of procedures aimed at improving the security of your system in order to prevent such incidents from recurring in the future.
If you use Google Workspace then your eDiscovery procedure is really simple. In fact, Google uses a specific tool to recover your data called Vault. Please note, it is included at no extra cost only in the Business Plus and Enterprise versions of Google Workspace,it must be active for all users in order to work.
If you use a Starter or Standard version instead you can purchase additional Vault licenses for certain members of your team, but in this case eDiscovery will only be active for these users.
As a Google Workspace administrator you can decide which users in your organization can access the Vault service, enabling or disabling it for users in the Administration Console, you can configure the service and decide how to manage data for specific Google Workspace applications.
Vault is web-based and can be used for Gmail Messages, Drive Files, Google Chat messages and logs, Google Meet recordings, Questions and Answers for Google Meet Surveys, Google SMS Group Messages, voice messages with related transcripts, and Google Voice call logs for Google Workspace.
With Google Vault you can store and export all the data you need, not only of active accounts, but also of suspended accounts--think staff turnover.
You can also store and search messages sent to a specific group of people, in a specific time interval, based on the content of the message.
The advantagesoffered by Google Vault are many. You can set specific rules of fixed or indefinite retention for certain types of documents before deleting or archiving them, create search criteria to narrow the field even withinOrganizational Units.
You can also locate what you are looking for via Gmail labels by seeing how it was set up by the user and how he or she applied the various labels, exporting the data in standard formats for later analysis.
Last but not least you will have access to control reports on the activities performed by users in Vault.
You use Google Workspace, but don't have a Business Plus or Enterprise plan and want to find a cheaper solution? Don't worry, with Google Workspace you can integrate Hycu Protègè which will help you in the eDiscovery process.
Hycu Protègè allows you to securely store your data, with a service that includes several recovery options to prevent any loss or destruction of important data for your business.
Through this integration you can protect your workspace from malware and data corruption, save time and resources by choosing which type of solution to adopt , back up in less than a minute on all your Google Workspace tools to an external cloud.
Hycu Protegé is designed to be used instantly, soit needs no maintenance or upgrades. Your backups happen automatically, and you can be the one to choose how your data is stored. What's more, you will have continuous technical support, with instant troubleshooting.
Whether you are a large company or a small and medium enterprise, power2Cloud as a partner of HYCU helps you choose the best solution for you and your budget according to your needs. Choose how to do your eDiscovery in the smartest possible way, without the use of complex procedures, write to us to learn more.