I find it interesting that almost every week at least one of the topics will be discussing a situation where the entity being discussed has one of our vaults. After 28 years in the industry and over 1,700 vault projects many of the big court cases will have at least of the parties using our vault to protect their vital information assets.
I always take a little pride when the party with our vault prevails over the party that does not protect their documents in a serious manner. When spoliation became a cause for a winning verdict and the Board of Directors was brought into the chain of liability in these cases, management has taken on a new mind set.
NFPA 232 has brought a new responsibility to Records Manager but also increased the liability of the records manager. I wonder if we will see a records manager sent to prison in the near future, for failure to perform their fiduciary responsibility.
Back in 1975 when I entered the security business, banks bought vault doors for concrete vaults and housed loan documents. In those applications, the Cashier of the Bank was responsible for the vaults.
Today, when I am invited to a Risk Management meeting, the records manager is now part of the committee along with Legal, IT, and the CFO.
In 1975, corporations protected only paper documents in vaults and media was protected by creating two sets of the tapes and the back up or Disaster Recovery set went off site. Today the current trend is to build a vault that can protect paper, microfilm & fiche; and, also computer media because CD-ROMS or DVD's or some form of PDF library is part of the records collection.
Those pushing D2D2 and use of the Cloud have missed the whole concept of digital or electronic records management. Some of the biggest Big Data companies even admit they do not see their storage platform as being "records". Big Data states that it is the user's responsibility to protect "that part that is deemed to be of records value."
Should the courts force Big Data to be a liable party just as they did with CEO's, CFO's and Boards of Directors. Since Big Data represents they can store these information assets in their Cloud, should they be liable for the Data Map and the confirmation of all records being available and sacrosanct once they take them into their D2D2 and Cloud Platforms? I think they should be liable. (If Ford makes a Pinto that kills the occupants in a collision, the courts held them liable. How is protecting the Corporations records any different? Especially since they market to convince management "they no longer need back up media.")
One thing I am very proud of is that over 100 offsite storage companies use our vaults to protect their clients data, clinical trials and disaster recovery sets. And we have determined with absolute certainty that the party with the best records management and the best protection for their records fare far better in court. Discovery costs less. Time to trial is less. And the Data Map can be prepared in faster time for the e-Discovery.
Attorneys are starting to walk away from clients that have terrible record keeping because they know they will have a much lower chance of prevailing in the case, if their client is unprepared and the other party is prepared. Law firms care about their win-loss records and if their client is unprepared, they will encourage settlement.
Digital Trust a consulting firm that assists companies in preparing for e-Discovery gave a great presentation in Chicago to offsite storage companies about how to assist clients about to enter into litigation. DT could reassemble the records stored on servers, tapes and other media so it made sense to the lawyers. But this costs millions as the lawyers work alongside the consultants and they demonstrated how important the records manager was in the process.
If I was a records manager I would make sure the C-Level managers understood that. I have had the opportunity to watch some of the "Icons" in our Records Manager world absolutely make the total difference in trials. Someday, you experts need to provide some case studies on this as you have absolutely saved your companies millions and millions. Unfortunately, these are usually settlement cases and you are sworn to non-disclosure but there should be a way to use a "nom de plume" to show exactly how powerful records managers, with all their records in hand and fully outlined data maps win the day. Just a thought.
Hugh Smith
FIRELOCK Fireproof Modular Vaults
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(610) 756-4440 Fax (610) 756-4134
WWW.FIRELOCK.COM
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