StoredIQ Announces “Just-in-Time” Desktop Agent for eDiscovery Projects

Published 30th June 2009

Just-In-Time Agent Delivers Unobtrusive, Intelligent Data Collection and Litigation Hold Policies across WANs and Low Bandwidth Networks

Austin, TX. – June 23, 2009 — StoredIQ Inc., a leading provider of Intelligent Information Management and eDiscovery technologies, today announced the StoredIQ Desktop Agent Solution for organizations who have geographically distributed sites, a highly mobile workforce, or a large number of employees. The new product consists of a central management console and network friendly software agents that can be installed only when necessary in order to filter and retrieve responsive data for investigations and electronic discovery projects. The unobtrusive agent operates without disrupting end-users and can automatically remove itself upon completion of data collection.

Collecting email and user files from remote offices or mobile users is problematic due to the combination of low network bandwidth and high latency. The challenges can be further compounded for mobile workers who use VPN connections. Organizations that use file copying software across an extended network typically over-collect what is necessary, as up to 90% of desktop data is non-responsive to a legal matter. They also face significant difficulties properly preserving all metadata, taking enormous amounts of time to complete data collection activities, and having no automated method to restart the collection process after a network interruption or if a remote user disconnects while a collection is in progress. The result is that either a member of the IT staff or a consultant needs to be dispatched to a remote office to perform custodian collection, or remote users are forced to ship their laptops into a main office for a few days. StoredIQ’s Desktop Agent solution prevails over all of these difficulties in a speedy, accurate and cost-effective manner.

Key features of the StoredIQ Desktop Agent include:

Just-in-time agent – The temporary, just-in-time agent is easy to install and removes itself when completed, eliminating the need for IT staff to manage or patch.

Network-friendly – The agent is designed to work across a variety of low bandwidth or high latency networks and through network firewalls to support VPN connections over ISDN, DSL or cable.

Centrally managed desktop agent dashboard – The desktop agent management dashboard provides centralized management and visibility of agent task assignments, activity and audit logs.

Intelligent desktop collection – The desktop agent can filter out non-relevant files on the target computer, reducing the amount of data to be collected and expediting the collection effort. Filtering can be performed using keywords, dates, file types, NIST hash list comparisons, or other metadata criteria though the StoredIQ query interface. The list of responsive files is available for verification prior to execution, allowing administrators to incrementally adjust and refine collections criteria as appropriate.

Recover from disconnected connections – In the event the network connection is lost, such as a user turning off the computer, the status of the agent activity is preserved and resumed later when the target computer re-connects to the network.

Visibility to computer storage devices – The desktop agent is able to identify and act upon any internal or external storage devices attached to the target computer including CD/DVD, USB or Firewire drives. Non-standard drive configurations for desktops are discovered and can be adjusted accordingly for proper collections.

Pause, resume, restart, cancel workstation activities – Desktop agent tasks can be paused by the administrator and later resumed or cancelled, allowing tasks to be dynamically prioritized.

Reserved agent connections – Dedicated desktop agent connections can be assigned to key custodians and executives who require priority in responding to collection requests.

Concurrent desktop collections – The desktop agent supports massively parallel collection activity across multiple computers, improving collection efficiency.

Write directly to litigation hold volume – Collected data can be stored to a target volume where StoredIQ can manage multiple litigation hold policies and deduplicate data collected across different desktops and different matters.

Searchable audit trail history – All activity performed by the desktop agent is logged and available for analysis.

“In the compressed regulatory investigation and litigation schedules we are seeing today, organizations need to begin their analysis in minutes, not days, and preserve and collect in hours, not weeks,” said Vivian Tero, Program Manager, Compliance Infrastructure, IDC. “The new StoredIQ Desktop Agent compliments StoredIQ’s existing broad federated enterprise systems access and provides leading information management industry capabilities for remote offices and mobile workforces.”

"IT organizations are highly reluctant to add new permanent software agents to their standard desktop configurations due to the increased effort and cost to manage them," said Keith Zoellner, Chief Technology Officer at StoredIQ. He adds, “StoredIQ’s temporary agent is designed for just-in-time deployment and self-removal upon completion of assigned tasks.”

StoredIQ locates, identifies, indexes and classifies unstructured and semi-structured data across the industry’s broadest range of storage, email, archiving, content, document and record management systems. StoredIQ provides precise search and analysis, enabling investigators to analyze and target data that is potentially responsive to litigation or investigations across the organization, regardless of where it is physically located. Using StoredIQ’s litigation hold policy, organizations can preserve potentially responsive data where it is located or copy the data without changing metadata properties to a retention platform. The potentially responsive data can be further filtered and de-duplicated before being produced in a review-ready format supporting Concordance, CT Summation, Native Format, EDRM XML or FTI Ringtail. Additionally, for large volumes of data, StoredIQ supports the ability to perform discovery exports, allowing legal teams to begin work in popular review systems before all enterprise data has been collected, eliminating the delay between collection and review.

About StoredIQ
StoredIQ is a leading provider of enterprise-class Intelligent Information Management solutions, enabling organizations to gain visibility and control over business-critical information to help meet their compliance, governance and legal discovery requirements. The company provides a range of integrated solutions for fast response to litigation and investigations, for proactive "litigation readiness," and for information protection and risk management, as well as storage management. Industry-leading companies rely on StoredIQ’s award-winning technology to streamline their information management and eDiscovery processes to reduce the risk, complexity and cost of litigation.