publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/1188906
I L T A W H I T E P A P E R | I N F O R M A T I O N G O V E R N E N C E 45 A billion emails are hard to ignore. "Save everything" may sometimes sound like a good idea, but a harmless overdependence on cheap data storage can easily grow out of control into an immovable mountain. This is exactly what happened to one global corporation, which after years of archiving all of its data, was stuck with more than a billion records to remediate. If that number seems outlandish, consider that approximately 128 billion business emails are sent and received every day. And storage is now relatively inexpensive. Moreover, many organizations believe it is safer or better to retain all of their data either for big data analytics or in case a need to retrieve legacy records ever arises. Because of these factors, the "save everything" approach is surprisingly common. Unfortunately, most information inherently loses value over time, while the cost and risk of keeping it either stays the same or increases. For the company mentioned above, as the scale of its archives grew, the value proposition of retaining such a high volume of information eventually became disproportionate to the rising storage costs and escalating risks associated with it. The organization recognized it needed to begin the process of remediating and defensibly deleting its data, but the problem had grown so large that the prospect of doing so seemed impossible. The job was far too big and complicated for a straightforward technolo fix. The company's legal department assembled a team of internal stakeholders B Y E R I C P E N D E R Moving Mountains Massive Data Remediation Project Provides Playbook for Defensible Disposal