X1 Discovery and the National White Collar Crime Center Partner to Fight Cybercrime with Cutting Edge Support and Training for Internet and Social Media Investigations

Potential evidence of white collar crimes is becoming more prevalent in social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  In fact, industry analysts indicate that electronic evidence generated from social networks is relevant to just about every criminal and civil legal matter and therefore must be routinely addressed by law enforcement, regulatory agencies, law firms, and corporate risk professionals.

In a recent LexisNexis survey of 1200 law enforcement professionals focusing on the rising prominence of social media evidence, 67 percent of respondents believed social media evidence helps solve crimes more quickly. However, the respondents also pointed to lack of training and technical familiarity as preventing their more widespread access to social media evidence.

X1 Discovery, the leader in software solutions for social media and website evidence search and collection, along with the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), an internationally recognized leader in education and support in the prevention and prosecution of high tech crime, have announced a strategic partnership to provide training curriculum and support to local, state and federal law enforcement agencies worldwide, as well as to legal, corporate discovery and risk professionals. The partnership will focus on promoting best practices and advanced techniques for website and social media evidence collection and analysis, based upon the X1 Social Discovery software.

This curriculum will provide best practices and new methods to collect, search, preserve and manage social media evidence from social media networking sites and other websites in a scalable, instantaneous and forensically sound manner. Participants will learn about specific cases involving critical social media data; find out how to collect and index thousands of social media items in minutes; understand and identify key metadata unique to social media; learn how to better authenticate social media evidence in a safe and defensible manner; and more. The X1 Social Discovery software is designed to effectively address social media content from the leading social media networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. In addition, it can crawl, capture and instantly search content from any website. Unlike archiving and image capture solutions, X1 Social Discovery provides for a “matter-centric” workflow and defensible chain of custody from search and collection through production in searchable native format, while preserving critical metadata not possible through image capture, printouts, or raw data archival of RSS feeds.

The use of social media as the preferred form of communications for all business both legal and illegal is going to grow at an accelerating rate. Therefore, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies worldwide, as well as to legal and corporate HR and  risk professionals are going to have to be prepared to collect and analyze this electronic information. The partnership between the National White Collar Crime Center and X1 Discovery is definitely a ray of hope for those organization that are in desperate need of assistance to deal with this growing problem.


You may view the press release on Reuters announcing this partnership at:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/31/idUS154421+31-Jul-2012+BW20120731

For more information about X1 Discovery, you can visit their website at: www.x1discovery.com.  For more information about the National White Collar Crime Center, you can visit: http://www.nw3c.org/

Labels: eDiscovery, facebook, LinkedIn, Social Media, Twitter, White Collar Crime, X1 Discovery

posted by Charles Skamser @ 1:58 PM 0 Comments

140-Characters or Less!

I am in the middle of a self imposed 60 day hiatus from posting articles to the “eDiscovery Paradigm Shift” blog and have been exercising my opinions about eDiscovery, Cloud Computing and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) in 140- characters or less  on Twitter (http://twitter.com/ediscoverygroup).  And, I actually have over 400 fellow Tweeters that are interested in what I have to say.  However, as a result, I have dramatically reduced posting original articles of more than 140 characters to my various LinkedIn Group, including: The eDiscovery Solutions Group (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1895044); The Early Case Assessment Group (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1827179); Enterprise eDiscovery in the Cloud (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3663508); and, The International Association of Data Mapping Professionals ((http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3036409).  And, I am not sure I like the results.  Therefore, after careful examination of these past 6 weeks weeks and with much soul searching, I am not convinced that Twitter affords me the same opportunity to fully express my opinion and commentary.

140-characters is just not enough real estate for me to say what has to be said.  Maybe I want to say too much?  Maybe I just don’t understand all of the Twitter abbreviations and codes?

I guess that the advent of Twitter and other social networking sites, as well as the popularity of text messaging, have made short-form communication an everyday reality. But expressing yourself clearly in short bursts-particularly in the 140-character limit of Twitter-takes special writing skill.   So, I actually bought and read Dom Sagolla’s book titled, “140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form.”  And, I have been studying other writer’s styles and trying to formulate a methodology and style of my own.  Unfortunately, more often than not, I end up just deleting the end of my messages until I get down to 140-characters and I am sure that most times readers are left wondering what the heck I was talking about.

You would think the social media technology that is single handedly brining down the Middle East (please note that Mark Zuckerberg probably wants a little credit also) and enables Charlie Sheen to communicate his wisdom to millions would be sufficient to tackle the requirements of addressing the state of eDiscovery, Cloud Computing and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC).  And maybe for some, it is.  However, for me, Twitter just doesn’t get it done.   Don’t get me wrong.  Twitter definitely has a place.  In fact, ironically, I will be Twittering this Blog posting (has Twittering risen to point where it needs to be capitalized?).  And, when I want to let everyone know what coffee shop I am sitting in or want to organize a community to “take action”, I will definitely use Twitter.  However, for the stuff that takes more than 140-character to express, I going back to writing my Blog at least a couple of times a week.

Labels: eDiscovery, facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter

posted by Charles Skamser @ 8:42 AM 0 Comments

eDiscovery Tricks and Treats for 2009

1. Its not a trick that the increase in the volume of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) is accelerating at an alarming rate (i.e. paper is so yesterday and tapes are not that far behind).
2. I think that its a real treat that Cloud Computing is taking hold faster than the market thought that it would (not me by the way!)
3. Its going to be a real treat for technology vendors as the "Cloud" emerges as the defacto storage location, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) eDiscovery solutions need to be given serious consideration.
4. Its a real treat that conceptual search technology and advanced analytics (i.e. something a little more robust than keyword searching) is going to be required in more matters than anyone thinks as the eDiscovery vendors move these technologies into mainstream eDiscovery solutions.
5. It's no trick that there is going to be a convergence of eDiscovery and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) faster than anyone realizes with eDiscovery becoming a sub-market of GRC (where have you heard that before?).
6. It will be a real treat when an integreated SaaS/Cloud based eDiscovery solution emerges later this year or early 2010 that supports the entire EDRM model and most of the requirements for GRC.
7. It may be a trick and certainly no treat for some that Federal and State judges are quickly moving up the eDiscovery learning curve and therefore it is already close to impossible to assume ignorance on the bench and push through outrageous claims regarding almost any issues with ESI and eDiscovery.
8. It will be a real trick for eDiscovery to become a standard practice with standard certifications. But, it will be a real treat when it happens.
9. It will be a real treat when players in eDiscovery better become familiar with terms like Lean Six Sigma and BPM. But, probably a real trick to get is all to work.
10. And, my favorite trick or treat for Halloween 2009 is the prediction that there willl be a matter where all of the responsive and relevant evidence comes from Twitter or Facebook. And, many in the industry will say, "what's Twitter and Facebook?". Better go ask your kids?

Labels: 2009 eDiscovery Predictions and Trends, Twitter

posted by Charles Skamser @ 8:14 AM 0 Comments