Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Barry Murphy. Published: 2013-01-10 09:00:13 Throughout 2012, a not-so-new concept began to surface in earnest: deletion of information. eDJ’s consultants have supported expiry initiatives for years, but until 2012 few corporate counsel and IT were ready to take responsibility for the potential consequences of expiring ESI that might turn out to be relevant to an evolving matter. This year brought a change of attitude to these initiatives. eDJ consultants have been involved in recent projects that have purged terabytes of non-record files and email.In eDJ’s Spring 2012 Information Governance (IG)[1] survey results, in which 52.8% of respondents reported having shared drive cleanup or migration projects underway – more than any other IG project mentioned in the survey. This statistic, combined with more and more client inquiries about data dissolution, made it clear that “defensible deletion” is one of the hottest IG topics currently and a priority for organizations in 2013. This report will provide an overview of defensible deletion and analyze some results of the eDJ January 2013 Defensible Deletion survey. The survey garnered over 430 responses and the data is very enlightening. You can access the full report here. (NOTE: This report is only available to Platinum Members of eDiscoveryMatrix.com; if you are interested in a Platinum membership, please email me for more information).Defensible deletion is the disposal of information assets in a manner that an organization deems reasonable and carries out in good faith related to its knowledge management, regulatory, and legal requirements. Put simply, it is a process for deleting information in a manner that an organization confidently feels it can defend if challenged in litigation or regulatory action.Deletion isn’t just a nice corporate “house keeping” idea; it is now a necessity due to the high growth rate forecast by business analysts. McKinsey Global Institute, for example, projects data to grow at 40% per year[2]; thus making it virtually impossible to effectively and economically store and manage organizational information without some form of culling.Meanwhile, another strategy, “non-deletion” or “big data storage” is also gaining adherents. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some organizations want to keep information around indefinitely and use increasingly sophisticated analytics software to automatically extract meaning and business value from it. While one could argue that the decreasing cost of storage combined with lower cost information processing platforms like Hadoop makes keeping information in perpetuity economically viable, it is important to remember that the cost and risk of eDiscovery can poke a giant hole in any economic assessment of information management costs.In November and December 2012, eDJ surveyed over 430 IG professionals about defensible deletion. Overwhelmingly, respondents believe that defensible deletion is absolutely necessary in order to manage the growing volume of digital information.
Defensible Deletion is Necessary