IDOL Echo - Proactive Legal Protection
Changes in the US Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) mean that any enterprise with operations in the US cannot afford to lose control of information. The new rules stipulate that, in the event of litigation, the defendant must be able to produce all accessible electronic information within 99 days of the request.
It is vital that litigants not only provide all the information, but also that they prove that they have provided it all - search and retrieval of information must be legally valid. Enterprises that choose IDOL not only have access to legally valid electronic document discovery tools, but also can take a more proactive stance by monitoring the use of the very information assets that may be subject to discovery.
IDOL Echo is a new module created by Autonomy to allow fully auditable and accountable monitoring of information use. Echo detection enables the enterprise to forensically account, track and trace each piece of data that enters, leaves, is born or dies within the organization. Be it a telephone call, a voicemail, an email, an attachment, an instant message, a document or a video, Echo can understand the data and then follow it through the organization. Through understanding, Echo can report on who or what the asset has influenced. Echo will audit the entire lifecycle from creation to deletion across format change and transmission between individuals and repositories. Echo detection builds upon IDOL's ability to listen, read and watch all forms of data then follow the complete lifecycle of every digital asset within the enterprise from inception to destruction.
Each IDOL component has a unique self-reporting capability that is not only designed to report state (i.e. is a process up or down) but to observe its environment and all aspects of its operation. For example, IDOL connectors that synchronize IDOL with underlying data repositories such as Exchange, Notes and NT will report at the most atomic level of detail. A connector will record just how many embedded objects have been found within a zipped and locked container, their type, size, format, version, MD5 hash values, age, creation history, authors etc. Where Connectors exist in cooperative farms, they communicate this information amongst themselves and to other higher order IDOL Echo enabled components. These cross-platform farms thus know when a document is created and how it changes wherever it's moved or sent. Unlike other technologies IDOL will always index the entire document and search the entire index however large.
Echo combines in real-time this harvested attribute data with the holistic and complete conceptual understanding of the entire enterprise data set. Echo can not only follow a traffic pattern such as the path of an email attachment or voice mail i.e. the what and when of who read, heard, forwarded and retained it but also detect the influence of its content: who in the enterprise has taken, re-purposed, been persuaded or even plagiarized what they have heard or seen.
The ripple effect of an idea can be measured as it jumps from mail to phone conversation to document. Even if that jump contains an 'air gap', Echo can trace the concept. For example, person A receives a call from person B who then relays it out of ear shot in the parking lot to person C who then hotmail's these ideas to person D. Echo can then be asked "who has heard this?" In addition, Echo can report where an author lacks influence or how a community has behaved.
With Echo it is now possible to protect against the breaching of 'Chinese walls' or from IPR strong boxes within an enterprise not on the basis of crude electronic permissions but on the human flow of ideas that cannot be regulated at the water cooler. The influence of individuals or programs can be measured across electronic boundaries. The repetition of confidences or the evolution of a concept can be detected, stopped or encouraged in real-time.
