The Basics Of Preserving Evidence: What You Need To Know

In today's digital climate, digital evidence is more crucial than ever. There are several reasonable steps that you need to take to ensure that your digital evidence is safely stored so that it cannot be altered with in any way. The following are some things that you can do to lock down digital evidence to ensure it is never corrupted in any way:

Work Together When Making a Preservation Call

When it comes to making decisions on how to preserve evidence, it is important that all involved make the decision. This includes your client's information technology department, your eDiscovery team, and yourself. The goal is getting access to the data quickly and as inexpensively as possible. To make this happen, it has to be adequately preserved.

While your eDiscovery team will have expertise in organizing the data and processing it efficiently, they are not tasked with the preservation aspect. An IT team is busy dealing with the everyday operations of your client, so preserving data for legal purposes is not typically in their wheelhouse. Each client will have a different technology system to deal with, and you need to ensure that all decisions are vetted and documented. A third-party preservation expert is often a good idea. All of you can have a say, but the final preservation decisions should be made by one entity.

Know the Difference in a Backup and a Forensic Image

There are crucial differences in a backup and a forensic image. Data backups can't always prove that data was not in existence. Like in any situation, a data backup can fail and you can end up with lost information with no proof that you ever had your hands on it.

A forensic image will remember the date from the media drive. It shows that, even if it is no longer accessible, that it was in existence and can be used as evidence. It is a duplicate of the data through mathematical algorithms and can often be reproduced.

The process of data collection and preservation is very complex and should be trusted to an expert company that you outsource. Many cases often hinge on the collection of thousands of pieces of data that have to be maintained optimally. It can be a very fragile and overwhelming process for a small IT department. The last thing you want is to lose a case because you did not properly preserve and maintain your digital evidence. The money you pay for an expert will be worth it.

For more information, contact a business such as The NGH Group.

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