Category Archives: Preservation & Collection

November 19, 2024 · 11:47 AM

Industry Experts Address Information Governance Challenges in Microsoft 365

By John Patzakis

Successful information governance in a Microsoft 365 environment can be extremely challenging. Organizations require ways to operationalize their compliance processes, in order to effectively address their information governance use cases, such as PCI compliance, ROT, Data separation, and GDPR. However, Microsoft’s Purview eDiscovery platform is a very expensive add-on to M365 that does not scale to the data throughput requirements of a typical information governance project.

This is because M365 is a massive data ocean that is not purpose-built for compliance and eDiscovery, and so a new “compliance index” must be created with data carved out of the M365 ocean to initiate an eDiscovery or compliance case in Purview eDiscovery to ensure proper and complete content indexing. As a result of this disjointed two-step process, users are encountering significant problems with low throughput and defensibility. Many customers report to us that Microsoft Purview Premium’s documented inability  to handle anything other than small matters due to their 2GB per hour throughput limit. A matter involving 100 custodians at 10GB of M365 data would take several weeks to complete with Microsoft Purview Premium.

Last week X1 hosted a webinar with industry leaders Randy Kahn and Chas Meier to discuss information governance challenges in an M365 environment. Kahn outlined information governance principles and priorities in general and then emphasized how technical automation is essential to enforce and execute on any implemented information governance policies and procedures.

Kahn’s overview segued into Meier’s discussion and demonstration on how the X1 Enterprise Platform is the best solution available for managing M365 data sources as well as on-premises sources like laptops and file shares. Meier highlighted recent case studies involving large-scale projects where X1 was able to search and analyze terabytes of M365 information very accurately and in a fraction of the time required for other means, including Microsoft Purview.

Meier explained how the X1 Enterprise platform’s unique architecture allows it to index nearly ten times the daily volume compared to Purview or other competitive “connector” technologies. X1’s patented distributed micro-index-in-place architecture, combined with horizontal scaling, makes X1 the only solution capable of handling rapid indexing, identification, searching, and remediation of massive data sets in the terabytes across M365 sources, including modern attachments and inactive mailboxes. Additionally, X1 effectively addresses both cloud and on-premises data sources in a unified manner, including distributed endpoints, network file shares, and multiple M365 services like Mail, OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint.

A copy of the webinar recording can be accessed HERE.

For companies navigating complex information governance and eDiscovery requirements, including those involving M365, the  X1 Enterprise Platform ensures compliance while protecting privacy. By implementing X1 Enterprise, organizations can not only reduce costs and save valuable time but also gain a strategic advantage in managing their information governance needs. We invite you to explore how X1 can transform your data management processes and help you stay ahead in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

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Filed under Best Practices, Corporations, ECA, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, GDPR, Information Governance, m365, Preservation & Collection

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October 17, 2024 · 1:59 PM

Dale vs. Deutsche Telekom AG Illustrates the Importance of Effective ECA to Attain Proportionality

By John Patzakis

In Dale v. Deutsche Telekom AG, No. 22 C 3189 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 4, 2024), a class-action antitrust litigation stemming from the 2020 merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, the Court denied the plaintiffs’ motion to expand a proposed custodian list from fifty custodians to sixty, including three in-house attorneys. The court stated that adding the additional custodians would be “out of proportion to the needs of the case.”

Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Cole began the order by quoting Vakharia v. Swedish Covenant Hosp.: “The discovery rules are not a ticket to an unlimited, never-ending exploration of every conceivable matter that captures an attorney’s interest. Parties are entitled to a reasonable opportunity to investigate the facts—and no more.” He also added: “The inescapable reality is that discovery has come to dominate civil litigation…Proportionality, like other concepts, it is not self-defining; it requires a common sense and experiential assessment…In other words, all are agreed that discovery has gotten out of hand over the years and needs to be reigned in.”

The Court’s opinion detailed the ill-fated negotiations between the parties, with a key take-away being the lack of visibility Deutsche Telekom’s in-house counsel had into their own custodians’ data, which stymied their ability to effectively eliminate guess work and limit the number of custodians. This case illustrates that while there is a keen awareness of proportionality in the legal community, realizing the benefits requires the ability to operationalize workflows as far upstream in the eDiscovery process as possible. For instance, when you are engaging in data over-collection, which in turn incurs extensive labor and processing costs, the ship has largely sailed before you are able to perform early case assessments and data relevancy analysis, as much of the discovery costs have already been incurred at that point. The case law and the Federal Rules provide that the duty to preserve only applies to potentially relevant information, but unless you have the right operational processes in place, you are losing out on the ability to attain the benefits of proportionality.

However, traditional eDiscovery services typically involve manual collection, followed by manual on-premises hardware-based processing, and finally manual upload to review. These inefficiencies extend projects by often weeks while dramatically increasing cost and risk with purposeful data over-collection and dozens of manual data handoffs. The good news is that solutions and processes addressing the first half of the EDRM involving collection and processing are now far more automated.

To accomplish the goals of gaining early visibility into your data to foster more intelligent early case assessment, informed discovery negotiations with opposing counsel, and targeted, proportional data collection, corporate legal department should utilize index and search in-place technology. Indexing and search in-place in this context means that a software-based indexing technology (as opposed to an expensive and cumbersome stand-alone hardware appliance) is deployed directly onto the laptop, file server or in the cloud for Microsoft 365 data sources. This indexing occurs without a bulk data transfer of the data. Once indexed, you can search through terabytes of information in seconds, with complex Boolean operators, metadata filters and regular expression searches. Legal teams can iterate and repeat their searches without limitation, which is critical for large data sets.

These capabilities supporting targeted and proportional collection of loose files, emails, and large network file shares and M365 are uniquely provided in the X1 Enterprise Platform.

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Filed under Best Practices, Case Law, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, Information Governance, m365, Preservation & Collection, proportionality

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June 25, 2024 · 11:28 AM

X1 Achieves Unmatched Throughput and Results in Several Recent M365 eDiscovery and Information Governance Engagements

By John Patzakis and Chas Meier

As discussed previously on this blog, X1 and our active enterprise customers believe X1 Enterprise Collect is the best solution available to address M365 data sources as well as on-premises sources such as laptops and file shares. In recent weeks, our customers and partners have executed several projects on a massive scale and have captured and documented X1’s performance metrics.

No other solution in the industry can index data across the enterprise as fast or as scalable as the X1 Enterprise platform, including Microsoft Purview Premium. When compared to Microsoft Purview, with its built-in architectural constraints and throttling limitations, X1 can index nearly eight times the daily volume of Purview or any other competitive “connector” technology can achieve in the market. X1’s distributed index-in-place methodology, combined with horizontal scaling of our index hosts, make X1 the only solution truly capable of handling the rapid indexing, identification, searching and collecting/remediation of mass data sets in the TB’s or PB’s across the modern enterprise. X1 effectively addresses cloud and on-premises data sources in a unified manner, including distributed endpoints, network file shares, M365 data sources including Mail, OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint, as well as other cloud data sources.

In several recent large-scale eDiscovery and information governance projects, X1 Enterprise Collect, on average, was able to collect and index M365 data (MS Mail [including archived mail and modern attachments] Teams, One Drive and SharePoint) at a rate of approximately 350 GB per day. This is nearly 8 times faster than Microsoft Purview, with its documented throughput limitations at 2GB per hour. X1 can achieve even faster throughput by scaling out virtual cloud computing resources.

Daily indexing volumes for endpoints and on-premises file shares vary due to the performance characteristics of each machine, but X1 indexes and searches endpoints in parallel yielding extremely high aggregate daily indexing and collection throughput.

Detailed documentation on these metrics and a further briefing on these engagements can be provided upon request.

X1 achieves such scalability through a decentralized approach that does not rely on the M365 or Purview search Index, which has known issues with the number of file types supported, consistency of search results, accuracy, and throughput. X1’s approach enables a very scalable, accurate, defensible, and robust indexing and data collection at unmatched speeds.

In addition to greatly reducing risk, X1’s capabilities also enable massive cost savings. X1 Enterprise Collect significantly streamlines the eDiscovery workflow by bringing targeted collection results directly into the review platform, thereby eliminating over collection, over processing, and over importing just to cull. X1 will populate ESI (Electronically Stored Information) straight into Relativity from an X1 collection without multiple hand offs, extensive project management and inefficient data processing.

The ability to collect data directly and transparently from custodian laptops, desktops, M365 and other cloud sources into a RelativityOne/Relativity workspace is a game-changer that enables legal and compliance teams to begin review in hours rather than weeks. As facts become known and collection focus changes, X1 allows teams to pivot and respond in hours. With the ability to efficiently take multiple bites of the apple, X1 enables teams to start fast and stay agile.

For a demonstration of the X1 Enterprise Collect Platform, contact us at sales@x1.com. For more details on this innovative solution, please visit www.x1.com/x1-enterprise-collect-platform.

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Filed under Best Practices, Cloud Data, Corporations, ECA, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, Information Governance, MS Teams, OneDrive, Preservation & Collection, SharePoint

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May 21, 2024 · 12:12 PM

Microsoft 365 eDiscovery Throttling is Structural and Won’t Be Going Away

By Chas Meier

Users of Microsoft 365 for eDiscovery and Information Governance continue to encounter significant problems with low throughput and defensibility. Many customers report to us that Purview eDiscovery Premium’s documented limitations, including a 2GB per hour indexing limit, prevent them from using the platform to handle anything other than small matters. A routine eDiscovery matter involving one hundred custodians each with about 10GB of M365 data typically requires several weeks to complete with MS Purview Premium. This is a non-starter for legal teams who are up against pressing litigation timelines.

It is important to understand that because M365 is built on a large-scale multi-tenancy SaaS architecture, such challenges are a feature, not a bug of the system. Multi-tenancy is an architecture where shared computing resources are apportioned across large numbers of users. This architecture enables Microsoft to provide the service at a lower cost since computing services are shared.

However, multi-tenant architecture enables scale (in terms of multitudes of users) and efficiency through uniformity. These architectures are not designed for outlier workloads like eDiscovery that routinely require intensive surges in computing resources to collect, process and search terabytes of data. In fact, multi-tenancy cloud architects would identify eDiscovery workloads as a “noisy neighbor” that threatens the overall performance and user experience of the system, and thus must be managed through quality-of-service mechanisms like throttling and time-outs.

I think of multi-tenant architectures like the business model utilized by a gym. The gym has more and better equipment than I have at home, which is attractive so many will join through a membership. The gym has a fixed amount of square footage and equipment which is more than any individual needs and is sufficient to support those that show up, occasionally having to coordinate access to the equipment but manageable. However, what if a small group showed up at the gym every day for most of the day and hogged the equipment? What if more people showed up, became frustrated, and dissatisfied? Gym management would be forced to act to ensure fair access to the equipment.

Throughout my career as an eDiscovery service provider, we made large investments in infrastructure and capacity to the point of overkill to equip ourselves to service a client’s need to address high volumes of data in short timelines without impacting their business-as-usual activities. We were like the fire department for big unstructured data needs.

A huge differentiator in X1’s approach is to divide and conquer large scale projects by leveraging the cumulative power of a decentralized computing orchestrated through a unified management, search, and collection console. Think of this like deploying a fire suppression system proactively before the fire.

Last year, X1 introduced M365 data connectors into our X1 Enterprise platform to satisfy a critical need for enterprises to conduct cost-efficient yet highly scalable eDiscovery search and collection of M365 data. The response has been tremendous, with X1 seeing record demand in large part, due to the architectural limitations and deficiencies noted above.

X1 Enterprise Collect provides users the unique ability to index and search M365 data in-place and then collect in a targeted and iterative manner. This at speeds and throughput far exceeding other tools, including Microsoft Purview Premium. X1 achieves such scalability through a decentralized custodian-based approach that does not rely on the M365 or Purview search Index, which has known issues with the number of file types supported, consistency of search results, and throughput. X1’s approach enables a very scalable, defensible, and robust data collection at speeds far exceeding that of M365 Purview and other approaches.

For a demonstration of the X1 Enterprise Collect Platform, contact us at sales@x1.com. For more details on this innovative solution, please visit www.x1.com/solutions/x1-enterprise-platform.

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May 7, 2024 · 9:28 AM

Index and Search In-Place Workflows Are Essential for Information Governance

By John Patzakis and Charles Meier

Information Governance

Accurate pre-collection data insight is a game-changing capability that enables organizations and their legal teams to determine the scope, volume, and content of electronic information before the very disruptive and expensive step of collecting the data. This insight is enabled through distributed index and search in-place technology.

A true distributed index and search in-place capability for unstructured data requires a software-based indexing technology be deployed directly onto fileservers, laptops, or in the cloud to address Microsoft 365 and other cloud-based data sources. This indexing occurs where the data sources reside without requiring a bulk transfer of the data to a central location. Once indexed, searches can be performed in seconds, supporting complex Boolean operators, metadata filters and regular expressions. Searches can be iterated and refined without limitation, which is critical for large data sets.

While our previous blog post addressed the critical importance of this capability in eDiscovery matters, it is equally essential in information governance projects such as PII audits, the purging of redundant, obsolete or trivial (ROT) data, and due diligence and data separation efforts in support of corporate mergers and acquisitions. Many X1 customers have recently employed our indexing in-place technology on such projects with remarkable success.

Incredibly, many of these customers also received alternative proposals that leverage traditional eDiscovery workflows presenting much higher estimated costs and much longer durations. Traditional eDiscovery workflows mandate broad and manual data collection, copying and migration efforts, large scale data processing, and loading the data into a different platform for review and analysis. There are three fundamental reasons why this “traditional approach” is fatally flawed for information governance projects.

  1. Prohibitive Cost and Risk. The data scope of information governance projects involves terabytes and sometimes petabytes of data. Mass collection, copying and migration of these data sets with manual hand-offs for later analysis in a centralized location is extremely expensive, disruptive, and time consuming. Also, mass duplication and egress of enterprise data under control to execute ROT, PII, data separation or other due diligence projects is completely antithetical to their very purpose.
  2. The “Now What?” Problem. Let’s assume an organization has decided to incur the enormous cost, disruption and risk associated with the mass copying, migration, and centralization of unstructured data, and after loading the data into a review process, a key subset of documents and emails are finally identified for purging or other remedial action. Now what? You are merely working with copies! The live “original” emails and documents are in M365, email accounts, file servers or on laptops. It is possible to manually retrace and remediate, but that process is expensive and disruptive.
  3. Instant Staleness. Finally, a mass copying and migration effort often requiring several weeks to complete, is immediately stale once eventually completed as the live data in its original location has inevitably changed.

X1 solves these challenges though our proprietary and patented distributed index and search in-place technology that enables scale by bringing true distributed indexing in-place to laptops, file shares, M365 and other cloud sources. X1 Enterprise Collect significantly streamlines information governance workflows by identifying and allowing for the remediation of targeted data in-place, thereby eliminating the need for expensive and cumbersome data duplication and migration.

For a demonstration of the X1 Enterprise Collect Platform, contact us at sales@x1.com. For more details on this innovative solution, please visit www.x1.com/x1-enterprise-collect-platform.

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Filed under Cloud Data, compliance, Corporations, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, Information Governance, law firm, Preservation & Collection

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