Backup Tapes Can Help Your Case


by Jason Perry - Date: 2007-04-02 - Word Count: 382 Share This!

Backup tapes are important. Aside from the fact that backup tapes can save a company's data in the event of a software failure, hard drive failure, or a database corruption... backing up a company's data on a regular basis should be a part of every IT department's disaster recovery plan.

As part of that plan, IT departments should test and validate that the backups are in fact backing up data and is able to be restored. Most companies assume that once the backup is running everything will be safe. However, not many IT departments routinely check the error logs to discover problems. And only when a disaster occurs do they realized that the scheduled backups have not been collecting all of the data.

From an IT point of view, the above is one of the hurdles they deal with on a daily basis. From a legal point of view, those backup tapes are even more valuable. Those tapes represent a snapshot in time for that company.

In a recent case, AAB Joint Venture v. United States, 2007 WL 646157 (Fed. Cl. Feb. 28, 2007), the court heard an argument regarding the a period of time (data) for which that data was not available. The defendant claimed that it had provided all e-mails related to the case. However, the court was not persuaded by defendant's arguments, and agreed that defendant's overall production of emails had been far from adequate. The court also said that, while cost was an issue for the court to consider in addressing a motion to compel, it was not the only consideration. The court continued with the following statement:

Here, because the Court finds that defendant had a duty to preserve evidence, as set forth below, the Court cannot relieve Defendant of its duty to produce those documents merely because Defendant has chosen a means to preserve the evidence which makes ultimate production of relevant documents expensive. Accordingly, the Court concludes that Defendant has not adequately responded to Plaintiff's requests for production of electronic documents and that supplementation of its response to Plaintiff's requests is necessary.

As the field of Computer Forensics and E-Discovery becomes more mainstream in litigation, more companies may find they need to take a look at what exactly is in the disaster recovery plan for both data loss and litigation.


Related Tags: e-mail, data recovery, cyber crime, computer forensics, e-discovery, dlt, back-up tapes, data base

Jason Perry

Computer Forensics Associates is available to evaluate your situation. For more information on Computer Forensics Associates service, visit http://www.computerforensicsassociates.com

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