Symantec Aims to Automate Electronic Evidence Collection

Symantec announced Aug. 6 a comprehensive e-discovery initiative featuring two e-discovery connectors for users of Symantec Enterprise Vault Discovery Accelerator that provide tighter integration with third-party case management, review and forensics tools.

Two e-discovery connectors have been released to partners to provide tight integration with third-party case management, review, analytics, forensics and desktop collection tools. The first, the Symantec E-Discovery Review Connector, automates data transfers to third-party analytics and review products to cut the amount of data produced for review while minimizing both labor and risk when responding to e-discovery requests. It also automates data export into legal load file format.

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The second is the Symantec E-Discovery Collection Connector, which will allow data gathered from third-party active desktop collection software from Symantec partners to be ingested into Enterprise Vault. Customers can then use Enterprise Vault Discovery Accelerator as the single centralized location and search interface for the preservation, analysis, review and discovery of all electronic records, Symantec officials said.

"Through these E-Discovery Connectors, Symantec is eliminating a lot of the cost, complexities and risk around the e-discovery process by automating evidence transport and tracking for chain of custody from the Symantec Enterprise Vault archive into a wide variety of third-party applications," said David Campbell, senior product marketing manager at Symantec.

Click here to read how Cisco and Clearwell Systems are partnering on the development of e-discovery tools.

E-discovery refers to any process in which electronic data, such as e-mail, is sought, located, secured and searched for use as evidence in a legal case. With competitive products, IT managers have to manually transfer data from an archive to third-party litigation support, review and analytics tools by burning data to a DVD, CD or hard disk drive, Campbell said.

"During this process they also had to manually document chain of custody to support the authenticity of the evidence being presented in court," he said. "This was a significant disruption for IT and also placed significant risk on IT administrators, who were not often trained in evidence handling protocol."

As part of this initiative, Symantec also announced two new services to help customers identify what electronic information exists within their organization, where it is stored and how quickly it can be retrieved. Customers will be able to turn to Historical Vault Services for assistance with the retrieval of information that currently resides on either backup tapes or legacy systems.

Symantec also announced the Retention Policy Definition Services, aimed at helping customers address business requirements around electronic information through consulting services focused on litigation readiness, compliance, information and records management, and data storage strategy.

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