Having an effective eDiscovery system in place is a saving grace for many companies, especially in cases of litigation and maintaining compliance to Sarbanes-Oxley legislation.
Now, the International Organization for Standardization is weighing in on the eDiscovery issue, but what will this mean for company data and information systems?
Standards
Already under the guidance of Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, many companies have stringent IT policies in place. This legislation, however, does little to dictate how to carry out this compliance and the process involved.
The ISO guidelines will focus heavily on approaches to electronic discovery practices, guidelines previously driven by industry professionals, but formally standardizing them for the first time. The group will address a range of technical challenges associated with eDiscovery such as data handling and data security. The working group charged with the project place high priority on standards for services and security controls, so data security is no doubt going to feature heavily in the forthcoming documents.
Benefits
Standardization of eDiscovery will be of great benefit to companies, especially those concerned about data security. Rather than respective jurisdictions working to define data security for their own regions and then looking to international relations as an afterthought, everyone will be on the same page when it comes to data protection.
With internationally recognized guidelines, multinational companies especially will have greater points of reference for ensuring optimal data security that applies to every territory they operate in.
Litigation
Not only will this be beneficial in every day operations and compliance, eDiscovery and digital evidence can also been seen to gain greater credibility under the new ISO standards. With internationally recognized standards applied to eDiscovery, its results can be seen to hold greater validity in cases of litigation. This can not come a better time as there is no doubt the digital age we live in will call for more and more digital evidence as we continue to rely on email and other electronic communication.
Computer forensics, information security and eDiscovery will all be seen to align under this ISO process – the first draft of which is expected in mid-September. While it remains to be seen just how the organization will approach the issue, it will no doubt herald many new responsibilities for businesses around the world. Now more than ever an effective, complaint solution for business data is becoming an everyday necessity.
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