By Josh Headley, Discovery Engineer
In Part I of D4’s Exchange 2013 Trick-or-Treat series, we showcased a few of the new eDiscovery features in Exchange 2013. This installment is all about sharing, the ways that Exchange 2013 and its buddy SharePoint work together, and assisting those who prefer to keep their chocolate doubloons to themselves.
*FEATURE #4: Site Mailboxes
Kids who share their candy after a full night of looting are few and far between, and who can blame them? In the modern enterprise, however, sharing information is essential to success. Microsoft made sure that Exchange 2013 and SharePoint 2013 are close friends. In fact, users can now maintain shared mailboxes called Site Mailboxes between Exchange and SharePoint that are accessible from Exchange, Outlook, OWA, and SharePoint. View e-mails inside SharePoint; view SharePoint documents inside Outlook. Microsoft calls this a “central filing cabinet” and, in fact, a Site Mailbox can be used in the TO and CC fields of an e-mail.
Trick or Treat? Collaboration is great, but now SharePoint itself could be considered a custodian of e-mail. Here’s yet another route for e-mail to creep outside of the central email system. If an email is not copied to Custodian A, but someone copies it to a Site Mailbox that Custodian A has access to, is Custodian A also a custodian of that e-mail? Is he or she a custodian of the Site Mailbox itself? Will corporate and outside counsel remember to inquire about the use of Site Mailboxes during a preservation or collection effort?
*FEATURE #5: SharePoint eDiscovery Center
Walking from house to house in a linear fashion is simply inefficient for collecting candy. Wouldn’t it be more efficient if all of your neighbors agreed to consolidate the candy at one house or in the middle of the cul-de-sac? SharePoint gets it. With SharePoint 2013, authorized users can set up a legal discovery case to handle identification, preservation, and collection tasks. From one interface accessible to internal investigators, lawyers, and paralegals alike, information residing in Exchange, SharePoint, Lync (think instant messaging), and file shares can be searched and collected. I repeat: file shares can be searched and collected. With the exception of file shares, however, all the discovered information can be put on in-place hold as well. The exports come packaged in EDRM XML format and include all Exchange objects in PST files.
Trick or Treat? Self-serve e-discovery for internal stakeholders is a big step in the right direction, but, unfortunately, searching across mailboxes and systems can result in loss of custodian, source folder, and other potentially pertinent metadata. Although not widely used, EDRM XML incorporation in Exchange 2013 may foster more widespread adoption of the seldom requested load file format.
*FEATURE #6: Data Loss Prevention
Have you ever collected so many pounds of candy that your pillow case or plastic trick-or-treat bag sprung a leak? It sounds like a problem many children will be glad to have this Halloween, but it’s the type of thing that can keep a corporate compliance officer awake at night. Exchange 2010 allowed administrators to program Transport Server rules to flag potentially detrimental e-mails leaving the organization. Exchange 2013 expands this capability by bringing key words and pattern detection to the table to recognize confidential information, social security numbers, credit card information, and other data items that could pose a risk if exposed. In fact, Outlook 2013 will display a message called a Policy Tip to the user if an outbound communication offends the policy. Microsoft provides pre-configured templates that recognize various patterns with sensitivity to diverse countries and regulatory environments.
Trick or Treat? Striking the balance between policy enforcement and user annoyance may prove to be a delicate tightrope walk. It’s certainly better than seeing your client or your company in the news under a “data breach” headline.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this bird’s eye view of the new eDiscovery features in Exchange 2013 and its close friend, SharePoint. While most companies are months or years away from implementation, the D4 Team is paying close attention to the new Exchange environment and its place in the discovery lifecycle.
As always, your comments and thoughts are welcomed!
