Lessons Learned from the News of the World Scandal: Data is Forever

http://ow.ly/5V09X

Article written by Jim McGann and posted by Eric Savitz on Forbes.com, on CIO Central CIO Network page.

This article points out some important facts...corporate data is often hard to truly eradicate.  The data is copied for disaster recovery, and for other regualtory compliance reasons, and often the user content we create exists in more than 1 physical location.  One of the major issues that becomes apparent when looking into the News Corp. scandal, is that there are many possible ways to locate the same data, and just because it may be deleted in one system, doesn't mean it is gone.

One of the major changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 2006 dealt with the concept of accessible data vs. inaccessible data.  Although data stored on back-up tapes, and in other data recovery systems may not be deemed accessible under the Federal Rules...that data still exists and if it is the best (or only) source for discovery in litigation, there may be a need to produce that data (even if costs are shifted, in whole or in part, to the requesting party).