Metadata Perp Walk
March 5, 2009
I mentioned the problems of eDiscovery in a briefing I did last year for a content processing company. I have not published that information. Maybe some day. The point that drew a chuckle from the client was my mentioning the legal risk associated with metadata. I was reporting what I learned in one of my expert witness projects. Short take: bad metadata could mean a perp walk. Mike Fernandes’ “Think You’re Compliant? Corrupt Metadata Could Land You in Jail” here tackled this subject in a more informed way than my anecdote. He does a good job of explaining why metadata are important. Then he hits the marrow of this info bone:
Data recovery cannot be treated as the ugly stepsister of enterprise backup, and the special needs that ECM systems place on backup must not be ignored. Regulatory authorities and industry experts are beginning to demand more ECM- and compliance-savvy recovery management strategies, thereby setting new industry-wide legal precedents. One misstep can lead to disaster; however, there are approaches and ECM solutions that help avoid noncompliance, downtime and other incidents.
If you are floating through life assuming that your metadata are shipshape, you will want to make a copy of Mr. Fernandes’ excellent write up. Oh, and why the perp walk? Bad metadata can annoy a judge. More to the point, bad metadata in the hands of the attorney from the other side can land you in jail. You might not have an Enron problem, but from the inside of a cell, the view is the same.
Stephen Arnold, March 5, 2009
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