Proven Legal Technologies has unveiled its free ‘back-up tape extraction checklist’.  The checklist has been created to give firms an accurate picture of their data storage systems and their back-up tapes’ intellectual value in data content.

Proven Legal Technologies, the corporate forensic investigation and e-disclosure firm, is working with a range of firm across the world to help them manage data from their back-up tapes to assist with corporate forensic investigations and disclosure exercises.  The checklist has been developed according to Proven Legal Technologies’ experience of real-life challenges faced by companies.

As compliance officials encourage firms to keep more and more data, Proven Legal Technologies calls upon firms to obtain an accurate and up-to-date view of their back-up data storage systems so that, amongst other things if they were raided by the regulators, there would be no unforeseen concerns.  A key component of litigation readiness is to take a proactive approach towards back-up tapes and how they relate to the demands of disclosure.

The checklist covers four key areas:

• Locating the back-up tapes;
• Cataloguing them effectively;
• Identifying how much data should be kept for regulatory demands;
• Transferring tapes to new media.

Phil Beckett, managing director, at Proven Legal Technologies, said:

“During corporate investigations, data needs to be collected, and collected fast.  Corporates often think that live data is sufficient and that trawling through back-up tapes is disproportionate to the value gained.  However, this is a false view.  Our experience has shown us that back-up tape extraction should not be pushed aside, as it can provide a wealth of hidden information that can assist in cases as they provide a ‘cleaner’ more timely snapshot of the data environment.

If back-up tapes are well managed and catalogued, they can provide a very efficient and effective solution to finding relevant, good quality data that can assist cases arguably making them a more proportionate and accurate source of relevant documents for disclosure.

After all, back-up tapes can often provide better and more evidentially accurate data than live collections.  Many firms don’t know where their tapes are, if they work, if they have been tested in a live disaster recovery scenario or if they are even protected.  This is a serious undertaking, but something that can be made more straight forward if you use our easy-to-follow checklist.”