This blog was originally published on CyFIR.com and has been reposted as-is here following eSentire’s acquisition of CyFIR Inc. in June 2021. As of the date of the acquisition, no changes have been made to the content below.
Collecting forensically-sound information is a critical need for Legal Departments during many proceedings, such as when responding to a subpoena, preparing for litigation, or during a merger or acquisition. This use case example illustrates how CyFIR eDiscovery Services can significantly improve the process of collecting and storing evidentiary data, resulting in faster and more accurate results.
The first time Emily heard about Project Showerhead, it was only an internal R&D project. As General Counsel, she had reviewed the patent filing related to the underlying technology. Few within the company realized at that time how many commercial applications Project Showerhead would have. Now, five years later, the project was fundamental to the company’s largest source of revenue. It was also at the center of ongoing litigation with their main competitor.
Emily knew the company was on solid ground to defend their intellectual property claim in court. She suspected that their competitor – a company ten times their size – had filed the lawsuit in an attempt to slow their growth by forcing them to divert resources into a costly and time-consuming legal battle. Emily knew their competitor had deeper pockets and more lawyers, but she had one advantage their competitor did not.
One of the first steps in preparing for litigation was to execute a company-wide search for all documents relevant to the project. Using CyFIR, one of Emily’s eDiscovery technicians began a company-wide keyword search that examined the full text of documents stored on any machine across their network, including field offices around the country. The search also examined email messages stored on their Exchange server and local Outlook PST files of specific employees assigned to Project Showerhead. The technician copied all the documents to a local storage location and placed a report summarizing the results on Emily’s desk. The entire eDiscovery search had evaluated hundreds of thousands of files and returned a complete set of evidentiary data in less than a day. With CyFIR, one technician was able to complete one of the most time-consuming tasks in preparing for litigation.
As Emily had anticipated, their competitor eventually dropped the lawsuit. Due to CyFIR’s speed and accuracy, preparing evidentiary data for the case had taken only a minimal amount of time and effort, and did not require an army of lawyers to complete.
Unparalleled Results.
Emily’s company licensed the CyFIR Enterprise Platform primarily for its Incident Response capabilities. However, her story demonstrates how CyFIR’s ability to search across an entire network can deliver significant value for Legal Departments when tasked with collecting documents from across the company. CyFIR reduces the labor-intensive nature of enterprise-wide search and document collection that is common during subpoenas or audits, in preparation for mergers and acquisitions, or in demonstrating regulatory compliance.
Some of the key takeaways from this example include:
- The CyFIR Enterprise Platform allows a technician to collect and store evidentiary data with minimal organizational disruption or loss of access to any network systems.
- The speed and scalability of CyFIR allow a technician to perform and revise digital searches on an iterative basis as search criteria are modified and refined.
- With CyFIR, the cost of eDiscovery is dramatically reduced because a remote search eliminates the need for travel to the physical sites where documents are located, and live access to documents eliminates the need for a lengthy document imaging process. As a result, the process of gathering evidence is reduced to days versus weeks or months when using other investigative tools.
- In addition to litigation, CyFIR’s eDiscovery capabilities have relevant value for M&A activity, regulatory compliance, and other situations in which Legal Departments must collect and report comprehensive enterprise-wide data.
