Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Online Data Backup, and You
Happy December! Besides the beginning of the mad rush for Holiday shopping, the lighting of the tree at Rockefeller Center, and attending multiple holiday parties, this month is special for yet another reason: the new changes in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
We first blogged about this development a number of months back, especially in this post. It’s something we’re keeping our clients abreast of. It’s a big change, and although today is the first effective date, we’ll certainly feel the ramifications for a long time to come.
A good friend of ours over at Telehouse International sent us a link to a great article this morning on Foxnews.com. The article, “New Rules Make Firms Track E-mails, Instant Messages for Federal Trials,” gives a good, quick overview of why these changes are so important for every business.
Under the new rules, an information technology employee who routinely copies over a backup computer tape could be committing the equivalent of “virtual shredding,” said Alvin F. Lindsay, a partner at Hogan & Hartson LLP and expert on technology and litigation.
Destroying evidence is pretty serious, and is certainly something I would never want to be accused of. We always practice what we preach: we use our own online backup solution of every computer, laptop, and server we use for our business. This way we always know we’d be prepared for any kind of electronic discovery.
These changes are going to be a burden for a number of companies, especially as their applicable scope is virtually unlimited. With under-staffed or overworked IT Departments, backup policies are often the first items to suffer from neglect. Regardless, we see these changes as a potentially positive development. No business should risk everything they have with easily corruptible and often incomplete backup policies. It’s our same mantra: make it automatic, and make it disk-to-disk.
We’ll keep our eyes and ears to the ground over the next couple of weeks to keep you all informed of any new developments. In the meantime, go backup your files!
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