(MSPAlliance) - Tuesday, May 2, 2006 - Electronic data discovery tools are a hot new line of products that uncover security breaches, compliance shortcomings and human errors in transactions across databases from administration to accounting. EDD tools look at real-time, as well as historical, patterns across multiple databases, networks and applications to find activities that indicate fraud, identity theft, compliance breaches and data theft.
EDD tools are different from security event monitoring (SEM) tools because they analyze historical data from multiple systems, not just a real-time focus on monitoring network activity. Some vendors will pitch EDD products as "forensics" tools, but different courts and law enforcement agencies have different standards. Companies should rely on lawyers to decide what records will be needed for specific legal proceedings.
EDD tools can help companies investigate security and compliance breaches, however, but the implementation of such tools should be specific to the needs of a business and its processes. New EDD tools can cost large businesses up to $1 million and six months to deploy and are not significantly effective alone to justify such a cost. Companies should look at EDD tools as supplements to current strategies of security and compliance monitoring.
