Vound home page
Interview Spotlight: Digital Forensics and eDiscovery from a privacy and compliance perspective
I sat down with Aubrey Brands, Esq. (CIPP/US) and asked her about her thoughts on digital forensics vs. eDiscovery, and how the two are different, and how they can come together during an investigation.
1. What industries do you work with when it comes to your position and using eDiscovery platforms?
Aubrey: “In my previous role I worked for a company that performed e-discovery on behalf of much larger law firms. Technically, the law firm was our client, however, the law firm's clients that required e-discovery were primarily large corporations engaged in civil litigation.”
2. What programs have you used in the past/currently using, and what others have you heard about?
Aubrey: “Relativity.”
3. What do those platforms help you with in your workflow, and what might they not excel in or could do better?
Aubrey: “Relativity expedites the document review process. It has been several years since I used Relativity so I cannot remember its shortcomings.”
4. What is your best quick description of digital forensics vs. eDiscovery?
Aubrey: “In my opinion digital forensics is the first step in the evidence gathering/investigation stage. In this stage, you are extracting ESI and documenting the actions and circumstances surrounding the event at issue. This could include documenting suspicious login attempts, identifying which user uploaded documents to a personal drive, or the overall path of a bad actor as they moved through an environment. eDiscovery is still part of the evidence gathering stage, however, this is more relevant during the formal discovery in litigation. eDiscovery involves sifting and sorting the evidence you have collected to determine what should be turned over to the opposing party. This may involve redacting information from relevant documents or using the information gathered from eDiscovery to create a Privilege Log for opposing counsel (a log of the documents you cannot turn over due to the document being privileged). Also, you will conduct eDiscovery on the evidence provided to you by the opposing party.“
I want to thank Aubrey for taking the time to talk with me and will hopefully be able to get an update in the future if she gets more hands-on experience with eDiscovery software.
Trying to draw the line between digital forensics and eDiscovery can be tricky. Both have their specifics, but can definitely merge together during the investigative process. Intella’s lineup of software strives to cover you from start to finish no matter what part of the investigation you have your hands in.