Overview
Code42 provides powerful tools for performing eDiscovery. This article explains the conceptual foundations of eDiscovery, how Code42 can be leveraged to support it, and then guides you through concrete examples that you can adapt to your needs.
Considerations
You should have knowledge of the following:
- The Code42 API
- Shell scripting
- Command line usage
- Basic programming concepts and skills
Support
For help working with the Code42 API, contact your Customer Success Manager (CSM) to engage the Professional Services team.
Terminology
There are overlaps between eDiscovery, data governance, analysis, and data visualization. Since these tasks have similarities and support each other, it is important to understand the following definitions:
- eDiscovery refers to the process of discovery in legal cases when the information is in electronic format.
- Data governance refers to the ways in which an organization attempts to minimize its compliance risk as well as to make sure that data is properly managed, kept secure, utilized effectively, etc.
- Analysis is the search for and presentation of useful patterns and information in data. Business intelligence, planning, metrics, and many other business activities are supported by analysis.
- Data visualization is one of the ways to present the findings and data gathered by analytics. It uses graphs, charts, and other visual aids to communicate the significance of patterns in data.
eDiscovery summary
eDiscovery consists of a number of steps and functions. The following diagram depicts the general workflow:
You may engage in some but not all of the steps, elect to carry out the steps in a different order, or cycle back to earlier steps.
Here is a list of the steps with associated sub-goals, for easy review:
-
Identification:
- Begin the legal hold process
- Locate and verify custodians and archives
- Preservation: ensure protection against inappropriate alteration or destruction
- Collection: gather data for further use in the eDiscovery process
- Processing: search and convert data into forms more suitable for review and analysis
- Review: evaluate data for relevance and privilege
- Analysis: evaluate data for content and context, including key patterns
- Production: deliver data in appropriate forms
- Presentation: display results and reports
Video
Watch the video below to learn about the eDiscovery workflow. For more videos, visit the Code42 University.
eDiscovery functions and features
The following table explains how the Code42 platform's features can be used to accomplish tasks for each of the steps in the eDiscovery process.
| Step | Functional requirement | Code42 feature or resource |
| Identification | Identify custodians and archives |
|
| Preservation and Collection | Create or confirm preservation policy | |
| Place users on legal hold | ||
| Retain and manage file metadata | Retain file metadata using Incydr Cases | |
| Process, Review, and Analyze |
Analyze restore activity
Restore history details are restricted. You can view only the restore history to which you have access based on your role and permissions. |
The following Code42 API resources:
|
| Analyze version history |
The following Code42 API resources:
|
|
| Analyze user file activity | User profile reference | |
| Production | Restore files |
|
| Restore archives |
|
|
| Restore versions |
|
|
| Presentation | Generate MD5 report |
|
| Generate files and versions report |
|
|
|
View user restore history Restore history details are restricted. You can view only the restore history to which you have access based on your role and permissions. |
|
|
| Present file event information | Add file events to Incydr Cases |
Remove custodians, archives, or devices
The following table explains how the Code42 platform's features can be used to remove custodians, archives, or devices from your Code42 environment.
| Code42 feature or resource | Code42 feature or resource |
|
Release from legal hold |
|
| Purge archive |
|
Additional API information
-
Code42 Developer Portal
- The API reference provides you with the latest documentation.
- All resources are described in detail, including methods, arguments, parameters, and examples.
-
Sample Code on the Code42 GitHub site
- Provides useful examples that you can adapt to your needs.
- Contact your Customer Success Manager (CSM) to engage our Professional Services team for help with adapting code examples or for the creation of customized scripts.
- Code42 API overview
Examples
The following examples are meant to provide insight into how the Code42 platform can be integrated with eDiscovery functions. As examples, they are not guaranteed to be suitable for any eDiscovery process without modification, review, and approval by your organization's compliance officer.
Restore history report with the Code42 console
As part of the eDiscovery process, you may need to determine who has restored files from a particular organization and when the restores occurred. To do this, perform the following steps:
- Sign in to the Code42 console.
- Select Administration > Environment > Organizations.
- Select an organization from the Active tab.
The Organization Details appear. - Click the number of Restores to view the Restore History page.
These details are restricted by role. You can view only the restore history to which you have access based on your role permissions. - From the action menu, select Export All to download the restore history as a CSV file.
Identify custodians
As part of the eDiscovery process, you may need to identify custodians based on which employees are in possession of a particular file. Forensic Search can search for various file criteria to help you determine which employees in your organization should be custodians placed into legal hold. To do so:
- Sign in to the Code42 console.
- Select Forensic Search > Search.
- Enter search criteria, such as a specific filename or path.
See our Track critical files use case for example criteria. - Once you have identified a potential custodian based on the Forensic Search results, you can investigate all file activity associated with a user by looking at their associated user profile.
Search the logs
As part of the eDiscovery process or other forensics needs, you may need to search the logs stored on your endpoint devices running the Code42 agent.
Code42 agent logs
You can access Code42 agent logs in the following ways:
- Have the user send you the Code42 agent logs.
- Access the device remotely and acquire the logs from the specified directory.
- From the Code42 console:
- Select Administration > Environment > Agents.
- Select an active agent.
The Agent Details appear. - From the action menu, select Retrieve Logs.
- Find the logs in the client log directory.
Code42 agent log example
The endpoint file system is the only place to find a persistent copy of the path names of the files restored by a user with the Code42 agent. The information is stored in the file restore_files.log.*, which can be retrieved using the console as described above, or by accessing the file system on the device. Here is an example of the information available about the path names of restored files:
I 03/05/14 06:01AM 622091232443159553 Starting restore from CrashPlan PROe Server: 1 file (80KB) I 03/05/14 06:01AM 622091232443159553 Restoring files to /Users/joe.johnson/Desktop I 03/05/14 06:01AM 622091232443159553 /Users/joe.johnson/Desktop/test.pdf I 03/05/14 06:01AM 622091232443159553 Restore from CrashPlan PROe Server completed: 1 file restored @ 26.6Kbps
Advanced log file analytics with third party tools
Log files can provide a source of data for third-party data analysis and visualization tools such as Splunk. For more information, see Install and manage the Code42 Insider Threat app for Splunk.
List of devices
You may need to produce a list of all active (or deactivated) devices as part of the eDiscovery process.
To create and download a list of all active devices in your Code42 environment:
- Sign in to the Code42 console.
- Select Administration > Status > Reporting.
- On the Device Status tab, select Active from the Device Status list.
- Click Run Report.
Custom scripts
The code examples below are meant to provide examples of use of the Code42 API in ways that can support eDiscovery. Code42 does not provide any guarantee on the suitability of any script or code example for any particular application. Contact sales about engaging our Professional Services team for assistance with custom scripts.
Data leak monitoring and detection with the Code42 API
Purpose
This script monitors and protects the archives of selected users in your Code42 environment against unauthorized or suspicious restore activity.
Source code
You can download the latest version of the restore watch script from the Code42 GitHub site.
Other Code42 API examples
Please browse the Code42 API examples on our GitHub site for more examples of ways to use the Code42 API in your eDiscovery projects.
Video
Watch the video below to learn how you can use Code42's legal hold in your eDiscovery workflow. For more videos, visit the Code42 University.