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Emerging Data Sources Resources

Case Study

FTI Technology’s Emerging Data Sources Experts Create Custom Solution to Collect Project Management Data from Azure DevOps in Breach of Contract Dispute

When an agriculture company became the subject of breach of contract allegations from one of its IT service providers, it needed to access technical project management information to prove its counterclaims in the dispute. The company and its service provider had used Azure DevOps as the project management platform for the work that was the source of the litigation, presenting the legal team with the challenge of collecting data from a complex non-traditional source. Outside counsel engaged FTI Technology’s emerging data sources experts to ensure critical evidence could be accessed and collected in a fulsome, forensically sound manner.

White Paper

Spreading Like Wildfire: Emerging Data Sources Continue to Spark Governance, Compliance, Discovery Challenges

Concerns over emerging data sources have reached an all-time high. After several years of steadily burning in the background of legal department challenges, the flames have caught on and grown, forcing in-house counsel and their law firms into fire-fighting mode across e-discovery, compliance monitoring, investigations, regulatory response and more. Over the last year, 62% of global general counsel confirmed they had experienced distinct new issues associated with collaboration tools, chat applications, file shares and other similar cloud-based systems, and nearly all (93%) expressed some level of concern about emerging data sources as a significant area of risk.

Case Study

Rapid Forensic Analysis Across 80 Devices and Cloud Sources Provides Critical Insight During Contentious Intellectual Property Case

When an intellectual property dispute between two companies in the aviation industry escalated to litigation and potential criminal charges, the defendant organization needed to quickly understand whether there was any merit underlying the allegations in the suit. This necessitated expedited forensic analysis of many dozens of devices in addition to cloud searches and other discovery work relative to the litigation. FTI Technology was engaged to provide digital forensics and emerging data sources expertise and support.

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Emerging Data Sources

Emerging data and the challenges associated with it are all around us and are present in many of the cloud platforms that organisations are using today.

Blog Post

New Developments in Case Law Underscore Complexities of Linked Content

What responsibility do parties have to produce files linked in communications? A court ruling in April 2024 has advanced the ongoing debate around whether hyperlinked content and dynamic documents should be treated the same as static attachments in discovery. While a clear, court-approved answer to this question has remained elusive, this ruling outlines obligations for parties to identify and produce linked content in context with the communications where the link was shared.

Case Study

FTI Technology Supports Law Firm Cloud Data Migration to RelativityOne

When organizations need to migrate to a new e-discovery platform due to changes in industry, consolidation of software providers, costs and various data and volume requirements, moving large, complex data volumes can introduce numerous challenges. Without adequate technical support, the process can become burdensome, error prone, time intensive and costly. In this engagement, a law firm approached FTI Technology to support effective movement of its e-discovery matters and related data from an on-premise environment to the RelativityOne cloud.

White Paper

Navigating Cloud-First Digital Forensics Across Asia Pacific Disputes and Discovery

Cloud data sources and the prevalence of messaging applications used within the workplace have spurred a new cycle of disruption in digital forensics, investigations and information governance. Overall user numbers for cloud-based platforms, and the variety of applications tapped for business purposes, will only continue to grow, especially as tech giants innovate with artificial intelligence and release new collaborative interfaces. The upshot is that counsel will grapple with how to uphold accepted principles for forensic defensibility, electronic evidence collection, data preservation and information governance across vast, complex, rapidly changing populations of data.

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The Legal Landscape of Emerging Data

How is FTI Technology helping legal teams address the challenges of emerging data?

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Gino Bello - E-discovery Trends in Asia

Gino Bello discusses emerging data sources.

White Paper

The General Counsel Report 2024: General Counsel Indicate Tipping Points in Strategy, Technology Adoption and Operations

Digital risk has triggered a fundamental shift in the corporate legal department. Against a tremulous cultural, economic and geopolitical backdrop, numerous issues have cascaded into tipping points across the legal function. Data-centered regulatory activity, privacy requirements, generative artificial intelligence disruption, technology advancement and an expansive web of emerging data sources are now impacting the way legal departments prioritize resources. In addition to placing tremendous demand on in-house counsel, this environment has led to a decline in the general counsel’s feelings of preparedness for every major risk category.

Blog Post

Q&A: Albert Soler Discusses the Digital Forensics Field in Spain

Albert Soler is a Director within the FTI Technology team in Spain, and an experienced digital forensics and e-discovery professional who helps clients uncover insights from digital evidence. In this Q&A, he discusses how emerging data sources are impacting the practice of digital forensics and e-discovery.

White Paper

Regulatory Scrutiny of Off-Channel Communications, Emerging Data Sources Heightens Governance and Compliance Risks

A broad cross-section of regulatory activity underscores just how valuable and risky data has become in the current business environment. More pointedly, scrutiny over “off-channel communications,” or “emerging data sources,” such as modern communications tools, collaboration platforms, personal devices and chat applications, is intensifying worldwide. U.S. authorities including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity and Futures Trading Commission and the Department of Justice have released new requirements surrounding the governance of emerging data sources and have implemented severe penalties against financial services institutions that have failed to properly preserve, monitor and manage off-channel communications.

Blog Post

Placing Emerging Data at the Centre of Investigations Strategy

On November 1, FTI Technology’s emerging data and digital forensics experts will join a panel alongside Emily Agnoli, Partner, Simmons & Simmons, and Chris Pell, Director, eDiscovery & Data Advisory, Standard Chartered Bank, to discuss the risks and impacts of emerging data sources in disputes and investigations. This blog previews some of the topics the panel will cover during the session.

Blog Post

UAE Financial Crime and Investigations Pulse Check

A recent announcement from the United Arab Emirates attorney general confirmed the government is moving forward with plans to establish special prosecution entities for financial crimes. This step is a continuation and escalation of the UAE’s efforts to increase investigations and prosecutions into abuse of the financial sector and other ancillary channels of illicit flows. It also aligns to the government’s “Forward Economy” and “Forward Ecosystem” strategies to advance as a global leader in economic and judicial strength.

Blog Post

The Missing Links in Modern E-Discovery

Productivity suites like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace have transformed the ways in which people collaborate across and share projects at work. They are also upending traditional expectations, case law and processes in e-discovery. The dynamic, cloud-based nature of today’s workplace platforms has spurred an array of complex data challenges around how electronic information is collected, processed, analyzed, reviewed and produced for litigation and investigations.

Blog Post

Roundtable: SEC Continues to Sweep Financial Institutions for Gaps in Data Preservation

In this Q&A, experts from across FTI Consulting discuss escalating scrutiny over “off-channel communications,” or “emerging data sources,” such as modern communications tools, collaboration platforms, personal devices and chat applications, and what financial institutions can do to either respond in the wake of charges or reduce their risk in the next crackdown.

Blog Post

Q&A: Calendaring App Clouds Data Discovery in Japanese Criminal Investigation

One of the largest law firms in Japan engaged FTI Technology to extract and preserve private cloud and personal device data from a calendaring application relating to a high profile criminal investigation. FTI Technology’s emerging data sources experts developed custom solutions to ensure a complete and defensible extraction of information from the application, despite not being compatible with existing e-discovery and digital forensics tools. In this Q&A, FTI Technology Senior Directors Suguru Yoshida and Maddy Ramasamy discuss the details of the matter and the unique digital forensics challenges involved in accessing data from the cloud calendaring application.

Blog Post

Q&A: Iliana Jaeger Brings Legal and Digital Forensics Expertise to Growing Switzerland Practice

FTI Technology announced its official entry into Switzerland in late 2022. Shortly after establishing the new presence, Iliana Jaeger joined as a Managing Director, focusing on disputes and investigations. In this Q&A, Iliana discusses the outlook for her practice and what issues she’s watching that may impact clients in the DACH region.

Blog Post

Alleviating Review and Analysis Challenges Across Mobile and Chat Data

The use of mobile devices, chat applications and collaboration and productivity tools have delivered significant efficiencies and opportunities for businesses. Often referred to in the e-discovery and investigations fields as emerging data sources, these systems and others, such as social media and cloud-based file sharing platforms, have been adopted by millions of users around the globe. Along with that growth, they are becoming more common as sources of evidence in disputes and investigations.

White Paper

The State of Emerging Data 2023: An Overlapping Arrival and Departure

Emerging data sources passed a tipping point this year. It was an expected turn for experts watching the evolution of systems, applications, technology adoption and communication habits over the past several years. Some understood that this year would bring an arrival of a new data reality. Indeed expectations have been validated — 71% of CIOs from the world’s largest organizations now say that the explosion of data is beyond human ability to manage. Simply, traditional data norms have been replaced by a complex, vast, dynamic and constantly changing data universe.

Blog Post

Q&A: Conor Gavin On How Chat and Apps Are Making E-Discovery More Complex

Conor Gavin, Senior Director, FTI Consulting, explains how an evolution in both remote working and the apps that people use in their professional lives is creating a whole new set of e-discovery challenges.

Case Study

FTI Technology Helps Major National Bank Enhance Its Smarsh Deployment to Deliver Cross-Functional Single Source of Truth for Communications Data

After implementing Smarsh to archive all communications, a major national bank needed access across multiple end-user teams and functions, including legal, regulatory compliance and more. The bank engaged FTI Technology to provide access to this single source of communications data for a broader audience, thus enhancing the bank’s return on its initial technology implementation.

Case Study

FTI Technology’s Digital Forensics and Emerging Data Sources Experts Solve Complex Data Extraction Challenges in High-Profile Japanese Investigation

The FTI Technology team in Tokyo received a request from one of the largest firms in Japan to extract and preserve private cloud data relating to an ongoing high-profile criminal investigation. The data of interest included calendar items in a cloud-based calendaring application, typically installed and used on personal devices. FTI Technology’s emerging data sources experts developed custom solutions to ensure a complete and defensible extraction of information from the application, despite not being compatible with existing e-discovery and digital forensics tools.

Blog Post

Understanding How Emerging Data Sources Impact Governance, Risk, Compliance and Discovery

Organisations are using an ever-increasing array of productivity and collaboration tools. Worldwide, and particularly in India, remote and hybrid work settings have led to accelerating data volumes and a rapid change in the modes and platforms used for business. While increasing use and divergence of “emerging” data sources — i.e., cloud-based systems, productivity suites, collaboration applications, etc. — are boosting productivity and flexible work, there are also significant data risk implications.

Blog Post

Proliferating Data Sources and Collaboration Tools have Moved the Goalposts for Investigations

Advances in digital technology bring new risks, and the need for new solutions to manage them. Deciphering events and gaining insights means that the discovery process must be as fluid as the digital natives who move intuitively across those platforms. Connecting cross-platform data to build a complete picture has never been more challenging, nor more urgent.

Case Study

Emerging Data Sources Prompt Extensive Investigatory Hurdles and Regulator Negotiations in Multi-Jurisdiction Antitrust Matter

In an ongoing series of antitrust and merger clearance investigations in the U.S. and Europe, a global life sciences company was facing significant challenges in meeting the authorities’ data production requests. Large volumes of data from numerous emerging data sources, including Box, Microsoft 365, Confluence, Workplace from Facebook, Mattermost and Foundation IP, had been collected to respond to a Second Request investigation in the U.S. As the investigations progressed, the data requests became increasingly complicated and difficult to fulfill. FTI Technology’s emerging data sources experts worked closely with the client to overcome obstacles and coordinate requirements with numerous regulatory agencies.

Case Study

Emerging Data Expertise Helps Solve Complex Linked Content, Business Automation and Technical Data Challenges in Multi-Jurisdiction Price Fixing Investigation

An Asia Pacific-based shipping company was under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and competition bureaus in numerous countries for alleged price fixing. The company was required to collect, review and produce documents from numerous emerging data sources, including Google Workspace and AppSheet. FTI Technology’s emerging data sources team was engaged to help navigate the nuances of linked content and collecting relevant electronic evidence residing in Google Workspace.

Case Study

FTI Technology Addresses Complex Technical and Logistical Challenges Across Numerous Emerging Data Sources in High-Profile Second Request

When a Second Request investigation was initiated as part of a large and high-profile technology industry acquisition, the companies were required to produce more than 8TB of data across a wide range of digital sources. Many of these were emerging data sources for which compliance and e-discovery controls and workflows had not yet been developed. As a long-time trusted advisor to the law firm representing the client, FTI Technology was engaged to handle e-discovery for the matter and create solutions to ensure relevant documents could be identified, collected, processed, reviewed and produced from the emerging data sources in scope.

Blog Post

Emerging Data Sources Insights Part 2: Is That Search Complete?

In-house e-discovery has been a topic of discussion and interest in the legal field for many years, and roughly half of law departments have established some in-house capabilities. With most enterprise email and productivity suites now providing built-in preservation, search, and export features, legal and IT teams have been able to perform certain upstream e-discovery functions without the involvement of outside providers. However, the growing prevalence of emerging data sources, which introduce many new complexities and nuances into the e-discovery paradigm, is beginning to erode the accuracy and effectiveness of in-house processes.

Case Study

FTI Technology Serves as Court-Appointed Data Expert in Multi-Jurisdiction Trade Secrets Dispute

When a Dubai- and Palestine-based joint venture between two multi-national organisations in the pharmaceutical and health care industry deteriorated into a contentious trade secrets dispute, the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) courts ordered a resolution in the form of a massive data remediation. The court appointed FTI’s Technology team in Dubai to serve as the independent expert to conduct data discovery, review and deletion for all disputed instances of trade secrets and source code across the violating entity’s systems. FTI Technology deployed experts from across the Middle East, U.S., U.K., Ireland, Spain and South Africa to complete a complex remediation involving 90 custodians, numerous systems and more than 100 devices.

Blog Post

Key Takes from Smarsh’s Future of Work Discussion

Only one in four organizations say they are very prepared for hybrid working (Cisco). The workplace shifts that occurred over the last two-plus years have introduced a flurry of operational hurdles, HR issues and unexpected business risks. And while these new challenges may be unwieldy — especially in industries like financial services that had not previously allowed remote work as a standard practice — they must be faced. Some form of remote working is the way of the future and organizations must adapt their risk and compliance programs to be as robust for a hybrid workforce as they have been across in-office environments.

Blog Post

Innovation Isn’t a Race, It’s a Mindset. A Glimpse at FTI Technology’s Approach to New Solutions.

Meaningful innovation never happens in one seismic moment. There’s no finish line. Rather, it’s an evolution of ideas, expertise and solutions over time, always fluid and open to change. This is how FTI Technology views advancement and the foundation for the New Solutions Program we have been building.

White Paper

The State of Emerging Data 2022: Waking a Sleeping Giant

Compliance, legal and IT teams face a dynamic data universe that is generating an unprecedented and varied influx of risk. The increased use of cloud-based and collaboration tools is creating challenges across investigations, legal matters, governance and data protection. Adapting to this new landscape of emerging data sources will be paramount to mitigating risks and establishing new best practices.

Blog Post

Pandemic Lessons Learned in Remote Forensic Analysis

Prolonged pandemic restrictions significantly changed the landscape for investigations, as the once typical travel to client sites to perform on-site forensic data acquisition was either severely limited or not an option at all. Data collection methodologies suddenly shifted from traditional disk-to-disk copy to remote methods, requiring digital forensics experts to establish methodologies that would enable remote collections in a defensible manner, presentable to a court, regulator or senior stakeholders.

Blog Post

Forecast 2022: FTI Technology’s Predictions for Emerging Data Sources

The transformation in where and how work happens has had a direct impact on the data that serves as evidence and/or creates risk in legal and regulatory matters. While the end user functionality of collaboration, productivity, cloud-based and remote work tools continues to evolve, the backend result for legal and compliance teams will become increasingly complex.

Blog Post

Linked Content Presents Challenges in E-Discovery

Linked content—dynamic documents shared as links rather than attachments—are emerging among the latest areas of debate in how emerging data sources impact e-discovery. Not only are courts and discovery experts beginning to discuss whether hyperlinked content should be treated the same as attachments in production, but practitioners are also increasingly encountering the legal and technical challenges of collecting, analyzing and reviewing linked content in real world cases.

Blog Post

Emerging Data Sources Insights Part 1: Why Permissions are Becoming More Important than Custodians

The corporate data footprint continues to expand exponentially in size, variety of sources and complexity, largely as a result of ongoing business adoption of cloud-based collaboration and productivity tools and a widespread shift to remote work. On average, most organisations’ IT systems now include 400 data sources, with the top 20% juggling 1,000 or more according to a recent survey from IDG Research. In the same survey, IT professionals stated their data volumes are growing by 63% monthly, with one in 10 indicating their footprint is growing at 100% or more each month.

Blog Post

Six Tips for Navigating Legal and Regulatory Risks in the App Age

Many corporations in Brazil are grappling with the implications of increased mobile phone app use for business communications and collaboration. Tools like WhatsApp are growing rapidly in enterprise user adoption and providing significant advantages for employee productivity and collaboration. Yet IT, legal and compliance leaders continue to worry over the impact these tools have on regulatory compliance, IT security, data protection and investigations.

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COVID-19's Impact On Our Data Footprint

How the emerging data climate change is transforming and changing the e-discovery industry

Blog Post

Data-Driven Challenges in Merger Investigations

I recently joined a Global Competition Review panel of M&A experts to discuss the effects and legal implications of several data-related issues on the merger review process. The panelists from Latham & Watkins, O2 and the European Commission/DG Commission brought a broad range of insights across regulatory, in-house legal and outside counsel perspectives.

Blog Post

Corporate Data Challenges in EMEA in 2021 (Part 1 of 4)

A physicist at the University of Portsmouth recently published research claiming that digital information should be considered a fifth type of matter, alongside gas, liquid, solid and plasma. The study, spurred by scientists’ interest in the effects of the world’s growing digital infrastructure, predicts that bits of digital information will equal the atoms of matter on Earth within the next 150 years. In this four-part blog series, I’ll discuss the key data challenges and trends that our clients are facing with the growth of data, and the importance of investing in proactive programmes and data expertise to manage and reduce the subsequent risks.

Blog Post

FTI In The News: Managing Director, Tim Anderson Discusses The Latest In Emerging Data

The data landscape continues to evolve and now more than ever, accelerate. Driven by the pandemic, people around the globe have been forced to adapt how they communicate, professionally and personally.

Blog Post

Discovery in the Cloud: An Investigator’s Close Look at Unexpected Risks and Challenges

After significant growth in 2020, cloud storage providers are continuing to experience increasing adoption within enterprises, and in turn spurring a rise in new legal and compliance challenges. The cloud storage market is forecasted to grow by more than 20% in the next five years across a range of established and emerging solution providers. With this growth, organizations are scrambling to make sense of how their reliance on providers like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Dropbox affects their governance and discovery processes.

White Paper

GCR Survey Report: Investigations, Data and Compliance

The pandemic and its ripple effects have impacted us all in many ways, including how we work. Suddenly, millions of workers worldwide made the shift to remote work - adopting new schedules, communication systems, and business practices. Antitrust practitioners were no different.

Blog Post

E-Discovery in 2021 is a Brave New World

Anyone who’s been in the e-discovery industry for any length of time knows that change is the only constant. It’s a practice and industry born from the very notion of change, and has been evolving steadily since its early days two decades ago. What’s happened over the last year is that the rate of change is now quickly picking up momentum. Trends that were just emerging in 2019 took full shape and began disrupting the space in 2020. More advancements—in the demands of e-discovery and the innovations brought forth to meet those demands—are on the horizon.

Blog Post

How Cartel Investigations are Evolving Alongside Data and Technology Advancements

Ashley Brickles recently participated in a cartels workshop hosted by Concurrences, alongside speakers from Herbert Smith Freehills, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), General Electric and the European Commission department for competition (DG COMP). The panellists comprised a diverse set of backgrounds and perspectives, which provided for a lively and educational session that covered procedural changes in cartel investigations, privacy concerns that have arisen in competition proceedings and the extent of the Commission’s investigatory powers.

Case Study

FTI Helps Biotech Company Meet Second Request Deadline for Major Merger

A major biotechnology company was seeking Federal Trade Commission regulatory approval of $1.2B merger. The agency issued a Second Request requiring a rapid response. The amount of relevant data to collect and review amounted to several terabytes. Also, there was an additional challenge in that the company’s systems were located primarily in the cloud, with data housed within multiple non-traditional platforms including Slack, Confluence, Workplace by Facebook, Asana, Box and more. The FTI team was able to work quickly with the diverse data sources to target, collect, and review over 12 million documents, helping the corporation to achieve compliance within the deadline set by the FTC.