INSIGHTS

The Three C’s to Mitigate Preservation Risks in a Remote Work Environment (Collaboration, Communication, and Compliance)

November 3, 2022

As none of us can forget, the COVID-19 pandemic forced companies to close their brick and mortar offices with little time to adequately prepare their employees for a remote work environment. All of a sudden, in-person meetings were replaced with virtual conferences via Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Amazon Chime – each leaving a new data trail. Many IT and Legal Departments were similarly unprepared for the impact of an all remote workforce on the creation, collection and preservation of business-related documents. IT departments were overwhelmed by employees defaulting to the use of unauthorized personal devices and cloud-based applications like Dropbox and GoogleDocs to complete assigned tasks, create, share, and store data, without IT vetting or coordination. Personal communications platforms such as IMessage, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp with untracked or no standardized retention policies replaced or supplemented enterprise instant message and chat functions, complicating the identification, preservation and collection of data.

A remote work environment has become the new normal for many companies. This abrupt change in the way companies conduct business requires commensurate changes in E-Discovery processes. To help meet this challenge, we discuss three key steps to mitigate potential preservation and spoliation risks occasioned by the shift to remote work environments.

Read more here on our Data Law Insights blog.