Topics
Emerging Data Sources Resources
Blog Post
Roundtable: SEC Continues to Sweep Financial Institutions for Gaps in Data Preservation
In this Q&A, experts from across FTI Consulting discuss escalating scrutiny over “off-channel communications,” or “emerging data sources,” such as modern communications tools, collaboration platforms, personal devices and chat applications, and what financial institutions can do to either respond in the wake of charges or reduce their risk in the next crackdown.
Blog Post
Q&A: Calendaring App Clouds Data Discovery in Japanese Criminal Investigation
One of the largest law firms in Japan engaged FTI Technology to extract and preserve private cloud and personal device data from a calendaring application relating to a high profile criminal investigation. FTI Technology’s emerging data sources experts developed custom solutions to ensure a complete and defensible extraction of information from the application, despite not being compatible with existing e-discovery and digital forensics tools. In this Q&A, FTI Technology Senior Directors Suguru Yoshida and Maddy Ramasamy discuss the details of the matter and the unique digital forensics challenges involved in accessing data from the cloud calendaring application.
Blog Post
Q&A: Iliana Jaeger Brings Legal and Digital Forensics Expertise to Growing Switzerland Practice
FTI Technology announced its official entry into Switzerland in late 2022. Shortly after establishing the new presence, Iliana Jaeger joined as a Managing Director, focusing on disputes and investigations. In this Q&A, Iliana discusses the outlook for her practice and what issues she’s watching that may impact clients in the DACH region.
Blog Post
Alleviating Review and Analysis Challenges Across Mobile and Chat Data
The use of mobile devices, chat applications and collaboration and productivity tools have delivered significant efficiencies and opportunities for businesses. Often referred to in the e-discovery and investigations fields as emerging data sources, these systems and others, such as social media and cloud-based file sharing platforms, have been adopted by millions of users around the globe. Along with that growth, they are becoming more common as sources of evidence in disputes and investigations.
White Paper
The State of Emerging Data 2023: An Overlapping Arrival and Departure
Emerging data sources passed a tipping point this year. It was an expected turn for experts watching the evolution of systems, applications, technology adoption and communication habits over the past several years. Some understood that this year would bring an arrival of a new data reality. Indeed expectations have been validated — 71% of CIOs from the world’s largest organizations now say that the explosion of data is beyond human ability to manage. Simply, traditional data norms have been replaced by a complex, vast, dynamic and constantly changing data universe.
Blog Post
Q&A: Conor Gavin On How Chat and Apps Are Making E-Discovery More Complex
Conor Gavin, Senior Director, FTI Consulting, explains how an evolution in both remote working and the apps that people use in their professional lives is creating a whole new set of e-discovery challenges.
Case Study
After implementing Smarsh to archive all communications, a major national bank needed access across multiple end-user teams and functions, including legal, regulatory compliance and more. The bank engaged FTI Technology to provide access to this single source of communications data for a broader audience, thus enhancing the bank’s return on its initial technology implementation.
Case Study
The FTI Technology team in Tokyo received a request from one of the largest firms in Japan to extract and preserve private cloud data relating to an ongoing high-profile criminal investigation. The data of interest included calendar items in a cloud-based calendaring application, typically installed and used on personal devices. FTI Technology’s emerging data sources experts developed custom solutions to ensure a complete and defensible extraction of information from the application, despite not being compatible with existing e-discovery and digital forensics tools.
Blog Post
Understanding How Emerging Data Sources Impact Governance, Risk, Compliance and Discovery
Organisations are using an ever-increasing array of productivity and collaboration tools. Worldwide, and particularly in India, remote and hybrid work settings have led to accelerating data volumes and a rapid change in the modes and platforms used for business. While increasing use and divergence of “emerging” data sources — i.e., cloud-based systems, productivity suites, collaboration applications, etc. — are boosting productivity and flexible work, there are also significant data risk implications.
Blog Post
Proliferating Data Sources and Collaboration Tools have Moved the Goalposts for Investigations
Advances in digital technology bring new risks, and the need for new solutions to manage them. Deciphering events and gaining insights means that the discovery process must be as fluid as the digital natives who move intuitively across those platforms. Connecting cross-platform data to build a complete picture has never been more challenging, nor more urgent.
Case Study
In an ongoing series of antitrust and merger clearance investigations in the U.S. and Europe, a global life sciences company was facing significant challenges in meeting the authorities’ data production requests. Large volumes of data from numerous emerging data sources, including Box, Microsoft 365, Confluence, Workplace from Facebook, Mattermost and Foundation IP, had been collected to respond to a Second Request investigation in the U.S. As the investigations progressed, the data requests became increasingly complicated and difficult to fulfill. FTI Technology’s emerging data sources experts worked closely with the client to overcome obstacles and coordinate requirements with numerous regulatory agencies.
Blog Post
The Modern Data Paradox: Power and Problems in Discovery and Investigations
E-discovery has always been a challenging field. Again and again, old problems are made new as the breadth and complexity of information sources change. Paper documents gave way to email, which has now been surpassed by a rising volume of chat and short-form messages from collaboration applications, mobile devices and social media. Today’s data landscape is rife with technical complexities that interfere with traditional e-discovery workflows — but it’s also rich with context and details that can inform strategy, decision making and more.
Case Study
An Asia Pacific-based shipping company was under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and competition bureaus in numerous countries for alleged price fixing. The company was required to collect, review and produce documents from numerous emerging data sources, including Google Workspace and AppSheet. FTI Technology’s emerging data sources team was engaged to help navigate the nuances of linked content and collecting relevant electronic evidence residing in Google Workspace.
Case Study
When a Second Request investigation was initiated as part of a large and high-profile technology industry acquisition, the companies were required to produce more than 8TB of data across a wide range of digital sources. Many of these were emerging data sources for which compliance and e-discovery controls and workflows had not yet been developed. As a long-time trusted advisor to the law firm representing the client, FTI Technology was engaged to handle e-discovery for the matter and create solutions to ensure relevant documents could be identified, collected, processed, reviewed and produced from the emerging data sources in scope.
Blog Post
Emerging Data Sources Insights Part 2: Is That Search Complete?
In-house e-discovery has been a topic of discussion and interest in the legal field for many years, and roughly half of law departments have established some in-house capabilities. With most enterprise email and productivity suites now providing built-in preservation, search, and export features, legal and IT teams have been able to perform certain upstream e-discovery functions without the involvement of outside providers. However, the growing prevalence of emerging data sources, which introduce many new complexities and nuances into the e-discovery paradigm, is beginning to erode the accuracy and effectiveness of in-house processes.
Case Study
FTI Technology Serves as Court-Appointed Data Expert in Multi-Jurisdiction Trade Secrets Dispute
When a Dubai- and Palestine-based joint venture between two multi-national organisations in the pharmaceutical and health care industry deteriorated into a contentious trade secrets dispute, the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) courts ordered a resolution in the form of a massive data remediation. The court appointed FTI’s Technology team in Dubai to serve as the independent expert to conduct data discovery, review and deletion for all disputed instances of trade secrets and source code across the violating entity’s systems. FTI Technology deployed experts from across the Middle East, U.S., U.K., Ireland, Spain and South Africa to complete a complex remediation involving 90 custodians, numerous systems and more than 100 devices.
Blog Post
Key Takes from Smarsh’s Future of Work Discussion
Only one in four organizations say they are very prepared for hybrid working (Cisco). The workplace shifts that occurred over the last two-plus years have introduced a flurry of operational hurdles, HR issues and unexpected business risks. And while these new challenges may be unwieldy — especially in industries like financial services that had not previously allowed remote work as a standard practice — they must be faced. Some form of remote working is the way of the future and organizations must adapt their risk and compliance programs to be as robust for a hybrid workforce as they have been across in-office environments.
Case Study
A technology company that develops artificial intelligence and autonomous transportation solutions engaged FTI Technology to lead e-discovery and document review in a dispute relating to departing employee theft of intellectual property. In addition to their e-discovery needs, legal counsel and stakeholders from the organization’s compliance team needed experts who could investigate and uncover specific data that contained IP across multiple data sources within the client’s environment and the opposing party’s environment. FTI Technology’s team of emerging data sources experts applied the firm’s proprietary Connect platform to drive quick access and insights into technical files and other sources of IP stored in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.
Blog Post
Innovation Isn’t a Race, It’s a Mindset. A Glimpse at FTI Technology’s Approach to New Solutions.
Meaningful innovation never happens in one seismic moment. There’s no finish line. Rather, it’s an evolution of ideas, expertise and solutions over time, always fluid and open to change. This is how FTI Technology views advancement and the foundation for the New Solutions Program we have been building.
White Paper
The State of Emerging Data 2022: Waking a Sleeping Giant
Compliance, legal and IT teams face a dynamic data universe that is generating an unprecedented and varied influx of risk. The increased use of cloud-based and collaboration tools is creating challenges across investigations, legal matters, governance and data protection. Adapting to this new landscape of emerging data sources will be paramount to mitigating risks and establishing new best practices.
Blog Post
Pandemic Lessons Learned in Remote Forensic Analysis
Prolonged pandemic restrictions significantly changed the landscape for investigations, as the once typical travel to client sites to perform on-site forensic data acquisition was either severely limited or not an option at all. Data collection methodologies suddenly shifted from traditional disk-to-disk copy to remote methods, requiring digital forensics experts to establish methodologies that would enable remote collections in a defensible manner, presentable to a court, regulator or senior stakeholders.
Case Study
A global life sciences company announced the planned acquisition of a competitor, triggering a large-scale antitrust investigation by the United States government. The investigation, commonly referred to as a Second Request, entailed collecting 43 TBs of data, then processing, reviewing and producing only the relevant information to regulators within a three-month window.
Blog Post
Forecast 2022: FTI Technology’s Predictions for Emerging Data Sources
The transformation in where and how work happens has had a direct impact on the data that serves as evidence and/or creates risk in legal and regulatory matters. While the end user functionality of collaboration, productivity, cloud-based and remote work tools continues to evolve, the backend result for legal and compliance teams will become increasingly complex.
Blog Post
Linked Content Presents Challenges in E-Discovery
Linked content—dynamic documents shared as links rather than attachments—are emerging among the latest areas of debate in how emerging data sources impact e-discovery. Not only are courts and discovery experts beginning to discuss whether hyperlinked content should be treated the same as attachments in production, but practitioners are also increasingly encountering the legal and technical challenges of collecting, analyzing and reviewing linked content in real world cases.
Blog Post
Emerging Data Sources Insights Part 1: Why Permissions are Becoming More Important than Custodians
The corporate data footprint continues to expand exponentially in size, variety of sources and complexity, largely as a result of ongoing business adoption of cloud-based collaboration and productivity tools and a widespread shift to remote work. On average, most organisations’ IT systems now include 400 data sources, with the top 20% juggling 1,000 or more according to a recent survey from IDG Research. In the same survey, IT professionals stated their data volumes are growing by 63% monthly, with one in 10 indicating their footprint is growing at 100% or more each month.
Blog Post
Six Tips for Navigating Legal and Regulatory Risks in the App Age
Many corporations in Brazil are grappling with the implications of increased mobile phone app use for business communications and collaboration. Tools like WhatsApp are growing rapidly in enterprise user adoption and providing significant advantages for employee productivity and collaboration. Yet IT, legal and compliance leaders continue to worry over the impact these tools have on regulatory compliance, IT security, data protection and investigations.
Video
COVID-19's Impact On Our Data Footprint
How the emerging data climate change is transforming and changing the e-discovery industry
Blog Post
Data-Driven Challenges in Merger Investigations
I recently joined a Global Competition Review panel of M&A experts to discuss the effects and legal implications of several data-related issues on the merger review process. The panelists from Latham & Watkins, O2 and the European Commission/DG Commission brought a broad range of insights across regulatory, in-house legal and outside counsel perspectives.
Blog Post
Corporate Data Challenges in EMEA in 2021 (Part 1 of 4)
A physicist at the University of Portsmouth recently published research claiming that digital information should be considered a fifth type of matter, alongside gas, liquid, solid and plasma. The study, spurred by scientists’ interest in the effects of the world’s growing digital infrastructure, predicts that bits of digital information will equal the atoms of matter on Earth within the next 150 years. In this four-part blog series, I’ll discuss the key data challenges and trends that our clients are facing with the growth of data, and the importance of investing in proactive programmes and data expertise to manage and reduce the subsequent risks.
Blog Post
FTI In The News: Managing Director, Tim Anderson Discusses The Latest In Emerging Data
The data landscape continues to evolve and now more than ever, accelerate. Driven by the pandemic, people around the globe have been forced to adapt how they communicate, professionally and personally.
Blog Post
Discovery in the Cloud: An Investigator’s Close Look at Unexpected Risks and Challenges
After significant growth in 2020, cloud storage providers are continuing to experience increasing adoption within enterprises, and in turn spurring a rise in new legal and compliance challenges. The cloud storage market is forecasted to grow by more than 20% in the next five years across a range of established and emerging solution providers. With this growth, organizations are scrambling to make sense of how their reliance on providers like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Dropbox affects their governance and discovery processes.
White Paper
GCR Survey Report: Investigations, Data and Compliance
The pandemic and its ripple effects have impacted us all in many ways, including how we work. Suddenly, millions of workers worldwide made the shift to remote work - adopting new schedules, communication systems, and business practices. Antitrust practitioners were no different.
Blog Post
E-Discovery in 2021 is a Brave New World
Anyone who’s been in the e-discovery industry for any length of time knows that change is the only constant. It’s a practice and industry born from the very notion of change, and has been evolving steadily since its early days two decades ago. What’s happened over the last year is that the rate of change is now quickly picking up momentum. Trends that were just emerging in 2019 took full shape and began disrupting the space in 2020. More advancements—in the demands of e-discovery and the innovations brought forth to meet those demands—are on the horizon.
Blog Post
How Cartel Investigations are Evolving Alongside Data and Technology Advancements
Ashley Brickles recently participated in a cartels workshop hosted by Concurrences, alongside speakers from Herbert Smith Freehills, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), General Electric and the European Commission department for competition (DG COMP). The panellists comprised a diverse set of backgrounds and perspectives, which provided for a lively and educational session that covered procedural changes in cartel investigations, privacy concerns that have arisen in competition proceedings and the extent of the Commission’s investigatory powers.
Case Study
FTI Helps Biotech Company Meet Second Request Deadline for Major Merger
A major biotechnology company was seeking Federal Trade Commission regulatory approval of $1.2B merger. The agency issued a Second Request requiring a rapid response. The amount of relevant data to collect and review amounted to several terabytes. Also, there was an additional challenge in that the company’s systems were located primarily in the cloud, with data housed within multiple non-traditional platforms including Slack, Confluence, Workplace by Facebook, Asana, Box and more. The FTI team was able to work quickly with the diverse data sources to target, collect, and review over 12 million documents, helping the corporation to achieve compliance within the deadline set by the FTC.