Whitepaper: Enterprise Vault Discovery Accelerator and Clearwell A Comparison August 2012

Transcription

1 Whitepaper: Enterprise Vault Discovery Accelerator and Clearwell A Comparison August 2012 Prepared by Dan Levine, Principal Engineer & Miguel Ortiz, Esq., ediscovery Specialist Globanet Ventura Blvd., Ste Sherman Oaks, CA

2 Table of Contents Introduction Collections and Data Sources Legal Hold Search Clearwell Analytics and Early Case Assessment Review and Transparent Predictive Coding Redaction Export and Production Feature Comparison: Discovery Accelerator vs. Clearwell Conclusion About Globanet

3 Introduction In 2006, after establishing its presence as the market leader in electronic archiving, Symantec introduced Enterprise Vault Discovery Accelerator. Discovery Accelerator began as an easy-to-use utility that provided legal users with the ability to search through data archived and indexed by Enterprise Vault. Symantec continued to improve and fine-tune Discovery Accelerator for more than five years before acquiring Clearwell Systems in Symantec s acquisition of Clearwell enabled the company to expand its ediscovery product line to better serve the different needs of its ediscovery customers. Enterprise Vault Discovery Accelerator remains a powerful tool for organizations that use Enterprise Vault, allowing them to search, preserve, review and export items that reside in the archive. For organizations that require more advanced litigation support, Clearwell provides organizations with the ability to collect data from multiple sources outside of Enterprise Vault, conduct robust searches, issue legal hold notices and preserve items in Enterprise Vault as well as other repositories. This whitepaper does not endorse one product over the other. It is intended as a guide for customers seeking to determine which Symantec ediscovery tool is best suited for their specific needs. Collections and Data Sources Both Clearwell and Discovery Accelerator can collect data from Enterprise Vault. However, Discovery Accelerator can only review data that is present in Enterprise Vault, which typically consists of messages (Exchange, Domino and SMTP) and archived data from file servers and SharePoint. Third-party solutions, such as Globanet Merge1, have extended Enterprise Vault s ability to address certain data types that that Enterprise Vault was not designed to natively ingest (such as Bloomberg, BlackBerry messaging and more), but Discovery Accelerator is still ultimately limited to data in Enterprise Vault s archives. Clearwell can collect data from a significantly larger number of targets, including direct collections from Exchange, Domino, file shares, SharePoint, Windows and Mac workstations and, using additional optional connectors, a number of other data sources. While both platforms can search through more than 400 attachment types, only Clearwell can perform optical character recognition (OCR) on documents during processing. Clearwell s targeted collections enable collection administrators to target specific custodian sources and filter collections by date, file type and keyword. Collections can even be run over the network or, for off-network custodians, from a Mac or Windows computer, using the onsite collector. Legal Hold Discovery Accelerator users have the option of enforcing legal holds for cases by implementing a physical legal hold on the data within a case. The items are then prevented from expiration or deletion from Enterprise Vault until the legal hold is released by an administrator. This is a critical feature for many organizations, because it provides them with the ability to freeze data in order to comply with litigation or discovery requests without having to necessarily rely on or alert custodians of a legal hold. Although in-place legal holds were previously unavailable in Clearwell, a recent update has added this valuable feature, provided that the data in question resides in the Enterprise Vault archive. Clearwell also has additional legal hold notification capabilities that are not present in Discovery Accelerator, such as the ability to automate and manage the critical process of issuing legal hold notices, tracking acknowledgment of notices and collecting critical information from custodians about other data sources or relevant custodians. The Clearwell Legal Hold Module streamlines the legal hold notification process by creating a defensible and repeatable workflow. Administrators can create legal hold notifications that optionally include attachments and surveys requiring responses from custodians who are subject to legal holds. Clearwell also gives administrators the ability to track legal holds by case or custodian, and generates a Defensibility Report for ease of review. 3

4 Search Discovery Accelerator and Clearwell also differ in their search capabilities and methodologies. The fundamental component of Discovery Accelerator is a case, within which virtually all operations occur. Once a case is created, administrators can apply legal holds, perform ad hoc and/or scheduled searches and assign the resulting items to users with differing assigned roles. For example, Discovery Accelerator allows for word- and phrase-level searches in addition to Boolean operators and other search criteria, including custodian, size, date, quantity of attachments and more. Discovery Accelerator also offers Discovery Accelerator Analytics, which is less of an analytics engine and more of an enhanced search methodology that leverages SQL full-text indexing. The data set associated with a case is placed in a temporary SQL database, and the contents are indexed, which allows for more robust searching. Reviewers can then build rules that perform automatic marking and tagging. For example, a rule might automatically search for all messages that contain the words poodle, Doberman and dachshund and tag them as dog. Clearwell administrators also begin by creating a case to generate and review a data set. However, Clearwell s search and review features are more comprehensive than Discovery Accelerator s, including discussion threads; topic clustering; custodian and group communication analysis; and concept search. With each Clearwell search, documents can be instantly viewed by discussion, participant, topic and file type. This allows users to get a more contextualized view of the documents in the data set and assists in creating a more intuitive way of creating additional searches. Clearwell also expands on Discovery Accelerator s search capabilities with Transparent Keyword Search and Transparent Concept Search. With Transparent Keyword Search, reviewers can use the keyword search preview to selectively include relevant variations or exclude false-positive variations. This is useful when using wildcards in keyword searches. For example, if a reviewer is searching for fals*, he or she can select specific variations of the keyword that are applicable to the search. Depending on the selections, false and falsify may be retained, while falsetto may be discarded. Transparent Concept Search is another innovative means of analyzing a data set. While Discovery Accelerator allows users to use previous searches as templates for subsequent ones, Clearwell s Transparent Concept Search allows users to find the terms that frequently occur in conjunction or proximity with previous search terms. This allows users to contextually refine the concept search by previewing the most frequently occurring terms and selecting only relevant terms. With both Transparent Keyword Search and Transparent Concept Search, Clearwell automatically documents which terms are included and excluded, and provides defensible reports detailing the search results. Clearwell Analytics and Early Case Assessment While Discovery Accelerator offers the Discovery Accelerator Analytics extended search functionality (described under Search see above), it offers no true Analytics functionality, an area in which Clearwell excels. Clearwell provides a number of tools to help uncover case details, including review of discussion threads; topic clustering; custodian and group communication analysis; concept search; and more. These tools also enable reviewers to chart the data that has been collected, processed and/or reviewed in order to uncover additional facts by looking at the information collected in a case from a variety of perspectives. 4

5 Review and Transparent Predictive Coding Clearwell and Discovery Accelerator both provide reviewers with the ability to view documents in a nearnative format without requiring each application to be loaded on a reviewer s workstation. Discovery Accelerator reviewers may apply a wide range of filters, use default or custom marks and/or tags and add individual comments. After the initial result set has been reviewed by more junior members of the team, senior personnel can conduct further marking and review, after which items can be exported and/or produced in native format. Clearwell s review capability is simple enough for small, in-house legal teams to leverage, but it is built to handle the largest review efforts. The recently redesigned interface maximizes screen real estate and minimizes reviewer mouse clicks. Clearwell s review features include text search, hit highlighting, nearduplicate identification, decision tree tagging, auto-batching and review workflow templates. Clearwell also offers Smart Tags, which, in many ways, is analogous to the rule-based tagging that Discovery Accelerator offers through Discovery Accelerator Analytics. Smart Tags can perform automated rule-based searching and tagging of items, but it is being expanded into a new, intelligent feature called Transparent Predictive Coding. Instead of repetitive rule-based searching, Transparent Predictive Coding starts with a training process, whereby tagging criteria from expert reviewers is collected and analyzed. After multiple rounds of training, Clearwell can then automatically generate predictions on how to tag documents. Clearwell s Transparent Predictive Coding differs from other predictive coding solutions by providing visibility into this training and prediction process, and delivering context for more informed decision making. As a result, reviewers gain a deeper understanding of how and why predictions are generated in order to make consistent review decisions and, ultimately, the accuracy and defensibility of the document review process increases. Redaction Discovery Accelerator does not have redaction capabilities, whereas Clearwell offers redaction and autoredact as part of its Review Module. Reviewers can quickly and easily redact documents in multiple colors, apply reason codes and verify redactions prior to production. In addition, reviewers can also redact specific text, pages or areas within a document. Redaction Verification also allows supervisory reviewers to rapidly navigate through each redaction within a document and quickly perform quality control checks to verify accuracy. Export and Production Discovery Accelerator can export to native file system and message formats, including MSG, NFS, HTML and PST as well as load file format, including EDRM XML. Clearwell, on the other hand, provides much broader capabilities. It can produce documents in native, image (TIFF or PDF) and mixed-mode formats (e.g., Excel spreadsheets in native, but all others as images). Export options include multiple metadata formats (EDRM XML, DAT, CSV, etc.), re-duping of data by custodian and preservation of original folder hierarchies. 5

6 Feature Comparison: Discovery Accelerator vs. Clearwell Feature Discovery Accelerator Clearwell Legal Hold Legal Hold Notification Physical Preservation Identification and Collection Data Collection from Enterprise Vault Data Collection from non-enterprise Vault Sources Processing and Analysis Process Non-Enterprise Vault Docs Integrated Optical Character Recognition Concept Search Advanced Discussion Threading Similar Document Detection Auto Filters Review and Production In-place Review and Tagging Batching Load File Import Redaction Language Identification Native Document Review Native Production Image Production Configurable Export Files Case Management and Reporting End-to-End Reporting Reviewer and Case Progress/Productivity Reporting 6

7 Conclusion Symantec s commitment to archiving and ediscovery is second to none in the industry, so it is only logical that the company would not insist on a one-size-fits-all approach to ediscovery. Discovery Accelerator has been a trusted platform for years and remains an entirely valid product for organizations with less complex ediscovery needs. If your organization requires the ability to search and preserve only data in Enterprise Vault, Discovery Accelerator may be the appropriate ediscovery solution. However, if your organization handles multiple matters per year, collects from a variety of repositories and manages much of the ediscovery lifecycle in-house, Clearwell is likely a better fit. If you are still uncertain which product will satisfy your requirements, a Globanet ediscovery specialist is available to assist you. Please call us at for more details. About Globanet Globanet is a leading provider of archiving and ediscovery solutions worldwide. Founded in 1996, the company is a pioneer in archiving and intelligent information governance, and has developed a portfolio of software and services to help organizations manage data from creation to expiry. Globanet s proprietary solutions include the Merge1 message capture platform and Migrate (formerly GEM) data migration software. A Symantec Platinum Partner with Master Specialization in Archiving and ediscovery, its professional services team has extensive experience with industry-leading Enterprise Vault and Clearwell. Globanet s broad range of services includes policy and solution design, installation and configuration, data migration, custom add-ons and project-based ediscovery consulting. For more information, call or visit Visit the Globanet Blog at globanet.com/blog or follow us on Twitter at globanet Globanet. All Rights Reserved. Los Angeles Ventura Blvd., Suite 1140 Sherman Oaks, CA New York 230 Park Avenue, Suite 1000 New York, NY