SEC Scrutiny Requires Production Of WhatsApp Communications
Author: ESIAnalyst
…ESI Analyst was recently leveraged to identify relevant communications requested as part of this process. The data in question surrounded text and multimedia-based communications between executives leveraging the popular smartphone app called “WhatsApp”…
…Given that multiple smartphones had been collected from each individual…
…This simple and easy to use analytical process enabled by ESI Analyst allowed for rapid identification of relevant messages and their parent threads…
Ideally case studies lay out enough information about the challenges, pain points, approach strategies and metrics to calculate a decent ROI and give readers a peak into solving a particular problem. This SEC inquiry case study focuses on search/review/production issues for new generation collaboration systems like WhatsApp. Deduplication and conversation thread reconstruction is indeed a pain point, especially when execs were using multiple mobile devices for communications relevant to the M&A activity. The blurb lacks any metrics that would support cost/time savings to back up their ‘simple and easy’ claims. It is always difficult to convince a corporate customer to be named in a case study, so most studies are anonymous. Although WhatsApp, Slack, Zoom, Teams, etc. have become critical for remote corporate teams, we still do not see them targeted often in civil discovery. I am glad to see that providers are working on the processing/review challenges posed by these new ESI sources, even if the majority of corporations do not seem to have efficient management or preservation strategies for them. Have you seen interrogatories or requests specifically targeting these ESI sources?