2011-03-22

TEC 2011 Apr 17-20 - The Exchange event of the year.

This is the one Exchange event of the year that you won't want to miss. Small conference. No marketing. 3 days with the people who have built Exchange from day one, and the experts who have shaped the market since the beginning. You won't find this many high calibre Exchange speakers in any other event. Nothing comes close. Until the next TEC, that is.

April 17-20, 2011. Red Rock Casino, Nevada.

Virtually every speaker has worked with Exchange since its inception. The names speak for themselves:
  • Tony Redmond
  • Kevin Allison
  • Paul Bowden
  • Ross Smith IV
  • Scott Schnoll
  • Greg Taylor
  • Michael Atalla
  • Jim Lucey
  • Lee Mackey
  • Dmitry Gavrilov
  • Keri Farrell
  • Nic Blank
  • Jerry Camel
  • Michael B Smith
Register here today: http://www.theexpertsconference.com/us/2011/

Don't miss it. This isn't a typical conference or summit. This is TEC. Networking. Learning. Hard core.

Be there.

David Sengupta
Conference Chair

2011-01-10

Dropbox LAN Sync

One of the programs I love to use is Dropbox ... provides great sync of files across multiple devices, and into the cloud. Dropbox recently added support for Selective Sync, meaning I can throw a bunch of files into the cloud and only sync down the stuff I want onto each device ... so for example Dad can have all his hockey pics, without having to carry Mom's teaching files around on his laptop ... and so on. One of the features in Dropbox is called "LAN sync". The way this works is that if you've got multiple PCs installed, Dropbox will find out that you're on a LAN and will sync directly between PCs, without the intermediary hop to the cloud. There are pros and cons to this. The key pro is that sync is very fast on your local LAN ... if I modify a file on one laptop it shows up on the other laptop in seconds. Makes for a great poor-man's DR solution in that if my laptop dies, I have all my files synched on a second machine within seconds. Nice. But the caveat of LAN sync is that to achieve this, every machine running Dropbox sends a broadcast across your LAN every few seconds. For example, if I look at a packet capture for my LAN I see "[source IP] 255.255.2555.255 DB-LSP-Dropbox LAN Sync Discovery Protocol" every few seconds. Some of you won't care, but this adds a fair bit of traffic on your network and will degrade performance, especially if you have multiple computers set to use LAN sync. To disable, just right-click Dropbox in your system tray, choose the General tab, and de-select "Enable LAN Sync". It would be nice if Dropbox allowed some tuning of this feature, or even provided a mechanism to manually 'tell' Dropbox where the other Dropbox-enabled machines were on a given network. On a related note, I'd be interested in hearing whether any of you are using Dropbox for PST synch. I've heard claims from some Dropbox forum members that this works well, but I'm skeptical. Haven't tried yet, and suspect PSTs would become corrupt over time. Has anyone tried?

2010-09-29

Isherwood, Julian. "SF: E-mail case full of questions" in Politiken.DK 29 Sep 2010.

Case in Denmark where one government party is alleging government workers were ordered to delete e-mail evidence ... ongoing challenge on whether they were actually deleted or not.

2010-09-18

Voigt, Kevin. Nokia: No. 1 and fighting for life. CNN. 18 Sept 2010.

Great illustration of disruptive technology (software-based smartphones) shaking up an established market (mobile phones). Will be interesting to watch Nokia try and get ahead of Android's momentum. My 3-year gut-level prediction on this market is that Windows Mobile market share will continue to flounder while Nokia (Symbian, etc.) and Google (Android) will fight it out for number 1 spot. Apple and Blackberry will fall in #3 and #4 spots. David

2010-04-07

Reuters. Toyota exec warned on defect: "We need to come clean". Apr. 7, 2010

E-mail evidence in Toyota recall case. David

2009-11-20

CBC News. Depressed woman loses benefits over Facebook photos. Nov 19, 2009.

Another example of social media being used as evidence. Or at least an attempt to use it as evidence ... David

2009-11-18

CNN Tech. Can the law keep up with technology? Nov. 17, 2009.

Good post that relates to e-discovery and social media. David

2009-02-24

Golden, Bernard. The Case Against Cloud Computing. IT World Jan 22 - Feb. 23, 2009.

Given all the hype for Cloud Computing these days, it’s nice to read a counter-perspective.

Key deployment blockers highlighted in Part 1 include:

  • Current enterprise apps can't be migrated conveniently
  • Risk: Legal, regulatory, and business
  • Difficulty of managing cloud applications
  • Lack of SLA
  • Lack of cost advantage for cloud computing

If you have time to read all the parts of this article, it’s worth a ready.

2009-02-23

Thompson Reuters launches instant messaging hub. HedgeFunds Review. Feb. 3, 2009.

Thompson Reuters recently launched their Reuters Messaging (RM) Interchange. This allows users to “connect and communicate with over 130,000 end-users in 5,000 companies”. Thompson Reuters claims this is the “world’s first global instant messaging clearing house”. Interesting move.

Conry-Murray, Andrew. IT and Legal Make A Great Team. Yeah, Right. Sept. 26, 2008.

Prince, Kevin. Top 9 IT Security Threats and Solutions. Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Journal. Feb. 16, 2009.

Some highlights out of the Top 9 IT Security Threats and Solutions relative to Sarbanes-Oxley mentioned in this article:

Threat #4 … with social engineering you compromise a human by tricking him/her into supplying personal information and passwords. Any method of communication will be used to perpetrate this fraud including telephones, mobile phones, text messaging, instant messaging, impersonation of support/vendor staff and social networking sites …. (emphasis mine)

McAllister, Neil. The 25 greatest blunders in tech history (IMO). New Zealand PCWorld. Feb. 23, 2009.

Listed as a part of the #1 greatest blunder in tech history, e-mail and instant messaging data leaks and security are a considered major problem. A quote:

The web, email, and instant messaging have given criminals unprecedented opportunities for fraud, scams, and electronic spying. In 2007, corporations lost customer data to cyberthieves like never before. And today's vast digital repositories make for very juicy targets that can be copied onto a few DVDs slipped unnoticed in a jacket pocket.

More reason to control those leak apps, notably e-mail and instant messaging, be it OCS, SameTime, Jabber or all of the public and financial IM solutions.

Kincaid, Jason. The AP Reveals Details of Facebook/ConnectU Settlement With Greatest Hack Ever. TechCrunch. Feb. 11, 2009.

For the past four years I have been talking at various conferences about this method of ‘unredacting’ improperly-redacted PDF documents by simply copying them and pasting into a new document.

Facebook/ConnectU just got stung, and this technique is getting a lot of publicity as a result.

It will only be a matter of time before someone takes the time to start searching other publicly-posted “redacted” documents to see which ones are similarly improperly redacted. When I first started talking about this method, I ran some tests against documents I found on websites of companies that are household names … I was shocked to see how many of them used this method of redacting.

What it boils down to is you can either:

  • 1. Cover the data you want to redact with a black square or set of squares (which leaves you open to the copy/paste technique)
  • 2. Replace the data you want to redact with black squares or [REDACTED] placeholder text

Obviously companies should be using the 2nd method.

Ignorance is no excuse.

Mack, Mary. Top 10 e-Discovery Cases in 2008. DiscoveryResources. Jan 13, 2009.

Mary Mack recently posted her Top 10 e-Discovery Cases in 2008. This is an important read if you care about e-discovery.

Basu, Tanya. Instant Messaging to Instant Jail. Discovery Resources. Feb. 19, 2009.

Instant Messaging usage is growing relative to e-mail usage, and instant messages are discoverable for legal investigations, etc. Here’s a great quote from the article on Mary Mack’s blog over at the Discovery Resources website:

The State relied heavily on the IM messages between the Defendant and the child’s mother to prove their case. Based on the IM evidence and other circumstantial evidence, the jury “reasonably conclude[d] that Defendant had incited [the child’s mom] to use her daughter in a sexual performance . . . and/or to consent to her daughter’s participation in a sexual performance violation.”

There are currently a handful of vendor solutions who provide solutions in this area, Quest Policy Authority for Unified Communications, Symantec, and FaceTime.

2009-02-22

Quest Software Policy Authority for Instant Messaging (OCS, Sametime, Jabber, etc.) Archiving, Compliance and DLP. Feb. 22, 2009.

Quest Software’s Policy Authority solution is an ideal solution for archiving, compliance and data leak protection (DLP) of Instant Messaging (IM) protocols including Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Lotus SameTime, Cisco Jabber, Reuters, Bloomberg, MSN, Yahoo, AOL and other IM protocols. Quest Policy Authority also supports archiving of BlackBerry PIN-to-PIN and BlackBerry call logs for compliance or tracking purposes. The solution is available in either software-only or appliance options, and is deployed in customers around the globe. In a manner of speaking, since MSN, Yahoo, AOL and BlackBerry all have Cloud Computing elements, Quest Policy Authority is an example of a customer-premises management solution being used to manage hybrid on-premises plus Software as a Service components.

Smith, Roger. Sun Cloud CTO: "Your Data Center is Your Computer". InformationWeek. Jan 22, 2009.

Cloud computing brings new challenges to e-discovery, as suggested by this InformationWeek article.

Having data spread across various public and private clouds – including some virtual ones – will only increase the costs and complexity associated with e-discovery.

CIO Today. Electronic Document Retention: What You Should Know. Jan 28, 2009.

Great article on electronic document retention. Some great tips from the article:

 

Practical Considerations for Electronic Document Retention

1. Keep document retention policies simple.

2. Do not let people with laptops become amateur transcribers. Ensure employees only use their company-issued computers for work-related documents.

3. Be careful of all informal notes.

4. Limit notes and board minutes to agreed actions items.

5. Do not engage in debates via email.

6. Never email sensitive material.

7. Monitor what people say via email, instant messaging and blogging.

8. Consider banning instant messaging and blogging.

9. Be careful of mobile email and text messaging. PDAs, BlackBerrys and other smart phone devices now serve as another location of potentially sensitive information.

10. Be careful of attorney-client privilege, or lack of privilege, especially when working outside the U.S.

11. Be sensitive when in-house legal counsel has dual roles of attorney and manager. Be aware of effect on privileged communications.

12. Be careful of outside service providers or web-based hosts such as AOL, Yahoo, etc.

 

From an instant messaging (IM) perspective, Quest Software’s Policy Authority solution (software-only or appliance options available) is ideally suited for monitoring, archiving and controlling communications.

 

2009-02-21

Shread, Paul. E-Discovery Thrives in Tough Times. Feb. 3, 2009.

A lot of e-discovery vendors at LegalTech recently. Interesting quotes in this article:

  • The investigation of Bernie Madoff may literally support a portion of the [e-discovery] market for the next couple of years” (quoting ESG sr. analyst Brian Babineau)
  • ESG has studied the value of e-discovery technologies and found that content archiving (e-mail, files, and so on) generates a fast payback because it centralizes data for easy identification and collection, and companies can also use it to enforce legal holds.

Also mention of Procedo coming out of stealth mode … any-to-any data archive migration focus.

Mintz, Jessica. Electronic Evidence Firm Grilled Over Absent Memos. Feb. 14, 2009.

Bit of a black eye for Guidance Software. Too bad they couldn’t find what they were looking for on their own network … presumably they do better for their customers.

David

Wall, Ethan J. Social Networking Sites Look Like Plunder to Attorneys. Feb 20, 2009.

Great article on social networking sites … it always amazes me just how much I can discover about a person by Googling them for awhile. Scary.

This article suggests that e-discovery lawyers will need to turn their attention to social networking sites as part of their investigations.

David

2008-12-16

Facebook used to find defendants in Australian court case. Ottawa Citizen. Dec. 18, 2008.

Good post on Facebook ... now being used as part of legal investigations! David

2008-05-19

Darlington, Shasta. Cuba alleges U.S. envoy carried funds to dissidents. CNN. 2008-05-19.

E-mail as evidence ... "the officials presented a series of alleged e-mails they said were between the diplomat, Michael Parmly, and groups based in Miami, Florida, opposed to the communist government. " David

2007-12-08

Police intend to charge O'Brien. Ottawa Citizen. Dec. 8, 2007.

Another example of e-mail being used as evidence ... this one focused on the Mayor of Ottawa ... Police intend to charge O'Brien. David