Digital White Papers

Potpourri

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32 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER POTPOURRI They Are Going To Share Files With or Without You In a worst-case scenario, a potentially devastating consequence of unauthorized file- sharing is a data breach. … Data security breaches on average cost about four million dollars. before using a cloud storage system, but most people do not know what those user agreements state. Some state that ownership of the content technically changes to the storage company while the document is stored in the cloud. This is usually harmless, intended to protect the company that originally draed the content from loss or damage or to allow the storage company to move the document in order to perform maintenance. With sensitive legal documents such as patents, however, ownership must be maintained by the law firm at all times to ensure that it can never be questioned. » Policy Concerns. Many countries (and some organizations) have policies requiring digital content to be stored within the country. When the storage system is on-premises, the company controls content location, but things get trickier in the cloud. Cloud storage is accessed through the internet but stored in a physical location within the hosting company's server farm. Hosting companies oen have multiple server farm locations, with documents stored redundantly across various locations –– and possibly in various countries –– to make sure they are always available. Even though unaware of the digital document's physical location, a law firm can still be held liable for breaching contract or policy by having legal content stored outside of the originating country. This would cause a problem, for example, in the provinces of Canada that have passed the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). PIPEDA requires records that hold personally identifiable information such as age, income, ID numbers and dispute records to be kept within Canadian borders and states that you become fully accountable for protecting that data once you collect it. For reasons such as this, it is crucial to understand all requirements for document location storage that affect your firm and the storage locations and policies of your cloud storage provider. » Applications Overload. There are currently over 20 file-sharing solutions on the market. While you might need to make special cases for large clients and their chosen solutions, if you leave it up to everyone to choose their own sharing method, your IT department will be overburdened trying to support a variety of programs. Worse, you will have no idea exactly where each piece of your content is stored. This will make things more complicated for lawyers, clients and IT, and it is possible clients might chose to leave this confusion and go with a more orderly firm. » Unsecure Content. Without evaluating each product your lawyers use, there is no way to evaluate the individual technologies or the risks they pose to confidential legal content. It is crucial to ensure that your technology supports permissions and security features so you can control who has access to the content aer it leaves your direct control. » Duplicate Content. In many cases, content is duplicated to be shared within a cloud system, which means several versions of the same document can be floating around, increasing the confusion and mess within a document management system and wasting lawyers' time while they search for the most current version of a collaborative document.

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