5 steps to compliance: building an automated data map: with electronically stored information duplicated and scattered across the enterprise, organizations benefit from creating a data map that identifies what information exists, where it is stored, and what policies govern it--particularly when facing litigation. Using automation tools to create the data map is the most effective way to keep it evergreen.

• Author: Balachandran, Bobby
• Position: TECH TRENDS

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In a litigious business world awash in electronically stored information (ESI), the need to access and analyze data in a usable format is clear. Unfortunately, many organizations' choices have been limited to reactive, fire-drill style processes. Ad hoc responses to e-discovery often lead to impartial or inaccurate production, an inability to prove inaccessibility, inadvertent noncompliance, and skyrocketing risks and costs.

With recent rulings on e-discovery procedure requiring organizations to have defensible knowledge of their data infrastructure, the logical starting point for a litigation response plan is an enterprise data map. A data map can quickly answer these questions: Where is the data stored, and how can I access it, if at all? Who controls this data? What policies govern it?

The enormous amount of ESI and paper-based documents stored in disparate locations, the prevalence of hard-to-track shadow data systems and individual data marts, the complexity of records management policies and regulations, data churn, and human resources turnover make answering these questions extremely difficult, if not impossible, without the aid of technology.

Unfortunately, until recently, there haven't been any tools, applications, or solutions available to organizations looking for a proactive approach for tracking and analyzing their data sources, custodians, IT personnel, or change histories.

Defining a Data Map

A data map is a comprehensive and defensible inventory of an organization's IT systems; it is a repository for data and information mapped to business units, data stewards, and custodians; and it is a critical component of a proactive litigation response plan and essential to a number of other important business processes.

The benefits of a data map are many. A data map aids with:

* Risk mitigation and compliance management

* Collaboration between internal and external teams

* Legal response to discovery requests and regulatory inquiries

* U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26(f) meet-and-confer meeting preparation n Targeting hold recipients quickly

* Avoiding inconsistent or inaccurate representations

* Mitigating spoliation risk

* Lightening infrastructure architecture development burden

* Interrupting document destruction schedules for preservation in a timely manner

* Identifying redundant data sources

* Addressing potential data anomalies and outliers

Manual Processes to Address Data Management

Many organizations have developed home-grown, ad hoc processes for addressing data management.

Most legal departments will create a partial data map. When a trigger event occurs, such as a letter arriving that threatens legal action, organizations must locate relevant data, custodians, and data systems and implement a legal hold. Legal teams learn over time where the highly litigious data resides and can get a feel for who manages it and whom to ask when they need to access it for discovery.

Organizations often also have IT inventories. For example, financial and human resources systems are typically well-documented due to corporate and records retention policies. Others grow up due to the needs of the business and exist in sub-organizations or as project resources and are largely documented through tribal knowledge.

The end result is ESI scattered across the organization, undocumented, and often in a format that cannot...