Evidential weight and legal admisability of stored electronic information
18 April 2010
EVIDENTIAL WEIGHT AND LEGAL ADMISABILITY OF STORED ELECTRONIC INFORMATION
Would you like single view and search facility of multiple data types including Voice, eMail, Instant Messenger, SMS, Voice, Audio, Video and Files & Folder? Are traders using other communication methods to do trades? Would you like to trace them with peace of mind that all is captured and can be found at a keystroke?
When BSI introduced BS 10008, it was designed to ensure that specific standards were adhered to regarding evidential weight and the legal admissibility of electronic information. We are now seeing their directive become the de facto requirement in environments, where compliance requires direct business usage of multiple communication and storage methods.
Legal admissibility concerns whether or not a piece of evidence would be accepted by a court of law. To ensure the admissibility, information needs to be managed by a secure system throughout its lifetime. Where doubt can be placed on the information, the evidential weight may well be reduced, potentially harming the legal case. BS 10008 ensures that any electronic information required as evidence of a business transaction is afforded the maximum evidential weight. The process is based on the specification of requirements for planning, implementing, operating, monitoring and improving the organization's information management systems.
BS 10008 is the British Standard that specifies the requirements for the implementation and operation of electronic information management systems and to the electronic transfer of information from one computer system to another, addressing issues relating to the authenticity and integrity of the electronic information. These issues are important where the electronic information could be used as evidence. BS 10008 also specifies the requirements for the management of the availability of the electronic information over time.
The form of the information may be page based, dynamic, three-dimensional and/or may contain voice / video recordings as required by compliance officers in financial institutions, insurance companies and local government departments.
In response to these needs Opentec have developed a portfolio of compliant data storage solutions. Opentec's core product CStore, is designed to organise data into a structured environment in a way that also maximises the evidential weight of all business records. It also provides a single searchable view across multiple data types. By ensuring customers information and business records are catalogued securely with maximised evidential weight, CStore provides greater operational value, reducing risks and costs.
Opentec solutions analyse each customer's needs to provide compliant archiving solutions that fit these requirements. CStore software addresses Regulatory Compliance; Information Security; Storage Management and BS 10008 and provides true multi-source compliant archiving. Opentec's CStore, organises data into a structured environment providing evidential weight of all business records. It also provides a single searchable view across multiple data types.
CStore™ The CStore Compliant Archiving & Data Management Solution helps organizations to solve both compliant data management challenges and also optimizes the storage of their data. It is designed to provide you with a single view across multiple data types such as eMail, Files & Folder, Instant Messenger, SMS, Voice, Audio, Video and other business records.
It fully supports the recommended provisions outlined by British Standards Institute (BSI) within BS 10008 - Therefore any relevant information required in a legal discovery case will have demonstrable maximum evidential weight, be fully audited and can be accessed and produced quickly.
CStore Benefits:
- An efficient and affordable solution that preserves maximum evidential weight of your information assets ation of valuable IT resources due to highly scalable architecture
- Facilitates comprehensive, corporate-wide information capture and corporate wide view of your data assets
- Secure and encrypted archiving solution that is hardware agnostic
- In built electronic discovery capability with case management and Legal Hold functionality
- Makes compliance with legislation and industry regulations easy
- A compliant tamper-proof audit trail
- Allows you to more easily implement Retention and Classification policies
- Peace of mind for CEO and CIO's who can enjoy dramatically improved corporate governance
CStore also provides further BSI 10008 compliant modules including: Storage Consolidation, Storage Encryption, Retention & Classification Policy, Audit Manager Discovery, Manager Collection, Integrator Recovery Manager, eDiscovery, Discovery Manager.
For more information about freedom of information (FOI) and data protection, visit the Information Commissioner's Office website: http://www.ico.gov.uk/