Increasing volumes of data and increasing volumes of compliance regulations are accelerating both the importance of eDiscovery and the challenges of managing the eDiscovery process. Solutions that look simple, like using the eDiscovery features available in Office 365, can end up increasing the complexity and costs of eDiscovery.

Rather than relying on built-in tools, custom-craft your eDiscovery solution with tools designed for data archiving and searching from the beginning. Adding Enterprise Vault from Veritas to your IT environment simplifies eDiscovery by tackling the new challenges that make it complicated.

Lower Completeness and Retention Capabilities

eDiscovery only works if the data to be searched is complete, but the retention policies in Office 365 are limited. When users leave the organization, you have to either extract their data from Office 365 within 30 days or pay to keep it. Journaling from Office 365 to Enterprise Vault eliminates that issue.

It’s also challenging to set effective retention policies in Office 365, as there’s no group-based retention. Unless you implement a workaround, users can delete email that isn’t on hold. Privileged users can even delete items that are on hold through the Exchange Management console.

In addition to those retention issues, Office 365 is incomplete for searching. Office 365 doesn’t index large email attachments and distribution lists. It’s also important to remember that Office 365 is not the full universe of data subject to eDiscovery, but the eDiscovery tools available in Office 365 can’t search outside that product. Enterprise Vault can archive more than 80 content sources, not just those that come from Microsoft.

Higher eDiscovery Costs

Because of the incomplete data and challenging retention policies in Office 365, the costs of responding to an eDiscovery requirement can be higher. Multiple, more difficult searches are needed to ensure all relevant items are discovered and reported. The streamlined searches of a dedicated tool like Enterprise Vault can be 300 percent more efficient!

Using Office 365 for archiving also has the cost of locking you in to Microsoft. Bringing data back to premises is tedious and time-consuming; it can costs about $10 per gigabyte in order to restore it.

Your eDiscovery tools are limited by the Office 365 license, as well, meaning you’ll have to pay more for Office 365 to receive full eDiscovery capabilities. E1 licenses don’t include all necessary tools for litigation and eDiscovery; E3 offers some support; only the expensive E5 licenses include Microsoft’s complete eDiscovery capability. Of course, you also have to track your licenses and capabilities across the cloud and hybrid versions of Office 365.

Greater Efficiency with Dedicated eDiscovery Tools from Veritas

The limitations of Microsoft Office 365’s eDiscovery tools means your team has to work harder to respond to eDiscovery requests. Searches in Office 365 can be time consuming. Searches using Enterprise Vault and eDiscovery Platform from Veritas are faster.

The Veritas tools are also easier for end users to work with. Unlike E1 and E3 searches, there’s a single user interface for legal and HR teams to use for searching and reviewing content. Supervisors can easily conduct reviews. Users have direct, easy access to archived content.

Make sure you’re able to meet your eDiscovery requirements. Enterprise Vault and eDiscovery Platform from Veritas make all your Office 365 data searchable along with all the other data your business users create. Contact dcVAST to start using Veritas tools with Office 365.