Collecting and providing email data should not be a risky gamble
Let's start today's newsletter with a recent "worst case practice" that impressively shows what can happens when IT managers provide wrong or too much data during a data provision, e.g. for a legal investigation. The current Swiss case, in which the Swiss Federal Office of Information Technology and Telecommunications provided the special investigator Peter Marti with e-mails for a much longer period of time than originally requested by the special investigator, has almost escalated into a medium-sized state affair in Switzerland and can be read at the following link
It is easy to imagine the risks and consequences that a similar incorrect or faulty data selection can mean for companies that are, for example, in litigation or settlement negotiations.
At KLDiscovery Ontrack, we do not know how this serious mishap could have happened in the data collection discussed at the beginning of this article. But we do know very well what utilities and tools an IT specialist needs to ensure that the collection and provision of legacy and active data from Exchange or O365 works reliably and error-free - namely by including specialised utilities such as the multifunctional forensically sound ediscovery collection tool for Exchange & O365 data - Ontrack Power Controls (OPC)
PowerControl is the Solution!
With Ontrack Power Control (OPC), responsible persons can carry out such sensitive data collections, granularly from individual persons or groups of persons as well as over predefined periods of time, at low cost, quickly and forensically correct (no metadata is changed), with just a few clicks, which is child's play, i.e. without great IT expertise, and make them available for further processing, e.g. as PST, MSG or TXT files, by means of a simple drag-and-drop command in any environment.
Ontrack Power Control offers some extremely helpful and stress-free functions that considerably simplify and accelerate the administrator's selections and extractions. OPC enables direct data selection from any offline Exchange databases (EDBs), which can also be located in mounted snapshots from various backup manufacturers.?
OPC enables access to offline Exchange data with just a few clicks, e.g.?
OPC also offers the function of easily transferring/migrating individual mailboxes into current environments. Using drag-and-drop, mailboxes can be easily dragged directly from the archived EDB into a PST file, into an active Exchange Server environment or into Office 365 without the need for the original Exchange application. The transferred data are immediately available at the destination as a 1:1 copy for further processing.
OPC allows to simultaneously support/manage different Exchange and/or O365 environments/versions in parallel & at the same time and?makes daily life easier for IT & Exchange Administrators,as well as Backup Managers & IT Service-Provider & IT-Supporter. Due to the extremely user-friendly design of the user interface and the fact that the processing takes place without forensic risks, OPC is also often used by non-IT specialists such as people from the areas of legal & compliance, HR, data protection officers, law firms, as well as eDiscovery or forensic specialists both for an initial e-mail data analysis and the effective final data extraction.
Advanced options & extended functions!?
By using the optionally available PowerPack ExtractWizard, administrators have an additional simplified possibility to find Exchange data (priv & pub EDB's) directly in the backup data?and to extract them directly from the backups without the need for the backup application originally used for storing/archiving the data. It does not matter where the backup data is stored. OPC extracts the data it is looking for from any storage, from the cloud and even directly from LTO tapes. The Power Controls Extract Wizard supports?Windows NT, BackupExec, NetBackup, Dell/EMC Networker, Arcserve, IBM Tivoli, HP DataProtector ComVault, UltraBac?and others.
Optionally, the solution can be extended with additional professional functions using the Powerpack for Exchange, which is also available as an option. This includes an extended search functionality, which allows searching for any words or word combinations, even in attachments, subject lines or names of attachments.?
Furthermore, PST files can be easily opened as a data source and searched comprehensively. Data can be easily copied and exported.?
In addition, complex e-mail search queries and analyses can be considerably simplified and accelerated by the content analysis agent.?
The administrative services agent, which is also included in the Powerpack, also ensures that the internal applicable IT security guidelines of each company are adhered to. All activities and accesses can be centrally controlled and are automatically documented.?
OPC is available in an entry-level version for up to 1'000 mailboxes. For IT service providers and for companies with more than 1'000 mailboxes, special licence are available.