Avansic - E-Discovery & Digital Forensics

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DATA PRESERVATION
ESI PROCESSING
E-DISCOVERY
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DIGITAL FORENSICS
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Preservation and Collection

Avansic begins each project by working with clients to evaluate the appropriate assets, devices and custodians to preserve. We advise preserving this information by creating forensics copies, which is a gold standard in the industry. Select data collection may be necessary for large caches of digital information such as servers or file shares. Visit Avansic's Data Preservation page for more information.

Processing and Filtering

The goal of ESI processing is to decrease a document set in a defensible manner. For a typical processing project, automated filters are applied to the data set to eliminate operating system and other non-user-generated data (otherwise known as “de-NISTing”). A data set is further narrowed by applying search terms, phrases, concepts, date ranges, data locations, and other client-specified factors.

Then, duplicate documents can be removed from either the entire case or from a particular custodian; this process eliminates files with the same content. Processing and de-duplicating an email set is significantly more complicated and requires expertise. Avansic typically de-duplicates email using email server tags or a combination of metadata fields within an email (i.e., to and from). Note that Avansic uses defensible de-duplication and filtering techniques – some programs have error rates close to 40%.

The resulting data set is ready for production, conversion or review.

Avansic maintains a team of researchers ready to provide solutions for any unique processing projects and challenges – their expertise has allowed many of our clients to enjoy more effective and efficient projects. This includes specialists for Apple OSX, SharePoint, DropBox, Lotus Notes, NSF Files, Groupwise, Android and many other data formats.

When processing for digital forensics, a licensed examiner will work with you to find the specific data of interest. Digital forensics is particularly helpful if there are a large number of unknowns, if the person of interest is technology savvy, or technological complexities exist.

Review and Analysis

There are two options for reviewing a document set: attorney-drive and investigator-driven.

Attorney-driven review is most common in e-discovery projects and typically takes place on special review software or document repositories. Almost all e-discovery projects involve some type of attorney review for hot documents and privileged information. These documents can exist in either native format (i.e., read using the program that created them with all the related metadata) or a petrified format (such as TIFF images), each of which has their advantages. Increasingly, attorneys are choosing to store and review their data in online repositories in order to most effectively collaborate with their litigation teams.

Investigator-driven review falls under the category of digital forensics investigations. If such an investigation is required, a licensed examiner will work with you to find the specific data of interest. Digital forensics is particularly helpful if there are a large number of unknowns, if the person of interest is technology savvy, if there is a suspicion that data has been deleted, or there are technological complexities. If deleted documents are of interest, note that the data set must be “data carved” at the beginning of the processing stage in order to produce the most accurate results.

Whether you are using attorney-driven or investigator-driven review, or a combination of the two, Avansic can help you navigate through the processing stage such that review is limited to only the most important data.

Data Exports and Production

There are two considerations for the production of a document set: the format and the method of delivery. A decision regarding production format also takes into account the receiving party, whether it is destined for the opposing party, clients, other experts, or other parties to the litigation.

Attorneys have a number of options when choosing the format of their production set, but most opt to receive a loadfile or TIFF files; native files, and PDF documents are also available. Consider that when converting to TIFF or PDF format, care should be taken with complex documents (such as Excel spreadsheets) in order to avoid generating thousands of undesired pages.

Avansic can endorse a production set with Bates numbers, confidential or privilege stamps, or any other identifying information during the production phase.

Depending on the size of the production set, documents can be delivered online (through a repository or secure file transfer) or via DVDs or hard drives. Data size and transfer speeds help determine which of these methods is the most efficient.

Avansic provides a free demonstration of our Online Review and Document Repository, which presents an ideal way to easily review documents from anywhere. The repository tool is user-friendly only requires an internet connection and Internet Explorer. Visit Avansic's Online Review Repository page for more information.

Call a case manager at (888) 808-0337 for a free consultation about any aspect of the e-discovery process.