Overview
As a legal administrator, you already know that preserving the data of custodians when a legal case is imminent, is the best and also the safest approach. As an inSync Legal Hold administrator, you can create legal holds and also add custodians to the legal hold who might have potentially relevant information. Your intended goal here is to preserve all the sources of electronic information (along with their metadata) as soon as possible without making the custodian aware of this activity.
Challenges for a Legal Hold Administrator
When you add a custodian to Legal Hold, you are only collecting data that the inSync Cloud administrator has configured for backup for that custodian.
However, often the data that is configured for backup is not sufficient for legal purposes. For Legal Holds, you might want to preserve a much wider set of data along with the data that is already being backed up. In such cases, you have to reach out to the Cloud administrator and ask them to collect the necessary locations of data.
This dependency on the Cloud administrator can delay the data preservation process and data critical to the litigation might get deleted or modified. Moreover, often the inSync Cloud administrators end up backing the entire data set available so that any subsequent requests from Legal administrators are taken care of.
How Additional Data Collection helps
With Additional Data Collection, as a Legal administrator, you can configure specific folders for data collection without any assistance from the inSync Cloud administrator.
The additional collected data are listed separately for each custodian in a Legal Hold. This data can only be accessed by administrators with Legal Hold access. inSync users and other inSync administrators will have no knowledge of this data collection. This flexibility and confidentiality of collection ensure that you can act quickly in times of need and secure the required data.
You can collect data based on the MIME type of a file. Even if users modify the extension of the file, they will not be able to change the MIME type of the file.
Any additional data that is collected for a user does not impact the storage quota assigned to that user. The collected data is a part of the organization's storage quota. To view the amount of additional data collected for a configured storage, go to Report > Storage Status report. Check the Additional Data Usage (MB) column.
❗ Important
Additional Data Collection can be configured only for Mac and Windows devices running inSync Client v6.6.0 and higher versions.
Only Legal administrators with Manage Legal Hold rights can configure Additional Data Collection.
Configure additional data collection
You can either create a new Legal Hold policy with additional data collection enabled or enable additional data collection for an existing policy. Additional data collection settings are global. Once defined, every Legal Hold policy with additional data collection enabled, will start backing up the additional data as per the configuration.
You can define the folders and paths that you want to back up as a part of the additional data collection process. The options are similar to the ones that are available when you configure backup locations during profile creation. However, the additional backed-up data is not visible to other inSync administrators and inSync users. Only administrators with Legal Hold access can view and access the additional data from the associated Legal Hold policy.
Procedure
Click the Global Navigation icon to access the Global Navigation Panel and click Data Governance > eDiscovery, and then click Settings on the left pane.
Click Configure.
For Windows, select the file folders that you want inSync to back up as a part of additional data collection. If you want to collect data from a folder that is not listed, click + Add Custom Folder and enter the Folder Path and the Folder Name of the custom folder.
In Collection Rules, define how you want inSync to identify files using the following options:
By File Extension: Select if you want inSync to back up files by their file extensions.
By MIME Type: Select if you want inSync to back up files by their MIME type. This is useful if any custodian changes the name of the file extension but the MIME type of a file cannot be changed or edited.
In the Include Files field, select the type of files that you want to collect. If a file category does not appear in the list, type the file extension in the box that appears below the Include Files box. For the list of file types that are by default included for backup, see Defined file types for backup.
In the Exclude Files field, select the type of files that you want to exclude from data collection. If a file category does not appear in the list, type the file extension in the box that appears below the Exclude Files box.
In the Exclude Paths field, type the path to the files and folders that you want to exclude from data collection.
inSync starts backing up the data in the folders configured for additional data collection. You can go to the Collection Stream tab to view the backup data and the additional collected data for each device.
Enable additional data collection for a Legal Hold policy
When you configure additional data collection for an existing policy, inSync immediately starts backing up the additionally configured data without waiting for the next backup cycle. If device backups are already in progress, then, inSync will start collecting the additional data after the device backup completes.
Procedure
Click the Global Navigation icon to access the Global Navigation Panel and click Data Governance > eDiscovery, and then click Legal Holds on the left pane.
Click the Legal Hold policy name for which you want to enable additional data collection.
Click the Data Collection & Access tab. In the Additional Data Collection Settings, select the Enable Additional Data Collection check box.
In the Collection Frequency section, select how frequently you want inSync to collect the additional data. This field is only displayed if you select the Enable Additional Data Collection check box. Select one of the following options:
One time: Collects data only once for each custodian associated with the legal hold.
Recurring: Collects data once every day for each custodian associated with the legal hold. If the backup frequency for any custodian is 2 days or more than 2 days, the additional data collected is as per the backup schedule.
Click Save.
Click the Data Collection & Access tab, and in the Data Access Settings section, click Edit.
In the Edit Data Access Settings window, select the Enable Additional Data check box if you want to give administrators access to the additional data using WebDav.
❗ Important
If any custodian has inSync client v6.5.2 and lower, inSync will create an entry in the Collection Stream but no data will be visible for that device.
Click Save.
View the details of the collected data
For all Legal Hold policies that have additional data collection enabled, each custodian has the following data collection types:
Backup - Data backed up for backup and restore.
Additional - Data collected over and above the backup data.
❗ Important
Additional Data Collection can be configured only for Mac and Windows devices running inSync Client v6.6.0 and higher versions.
Procedure
Click the Global Navigation icon to access the Global Navigation Panel and click Data Governance > eDiscovery, and then click Legal Holds on the left pane.
Click the Legal Hold policy name for which you want to view collected data.
Click the Collection Stream tab.
You will see two entries for each device: Backup and Additional.Select the device name and click Collection Details to view the details of the collected data.
The Collection Details window contains the following details:
Last collection Summary - The type, and the timestamp of the last successful backup. It also displays the number of files successfully backed up during the last backup.
Data Source Summary - Details of the data source, along with the device status and the folder paths configured for backup. The details are specific to the backup type (additionally collected data or device backups) of that data source.
Last Attempted Summary - Displays if inSync was able to successfully back up data in the last backup cycle. If not then, it displays the error as to why inSync could not collect data. You can download the logs to view the details of the last backup. For last backed-up data failed backups, click Download Logs to download the inSync client logs. For additional data collection, click Download Logs to download additional data collection logs.
Disable additional data collection for a Legal Hold policy
When you disable additional data collection, the collected data is still visible in the Collection Stream tab.
Procedure
Click the Global Navigation icon to access the Global Navigation Panel and click Data Governance > eDiscovery, and then click Legal Holds on the left pane.
Click the Legal Hold policy name for which you want to disable additional data collection.
In the Additional Data Collection Settings section, click Edit.
Clear the Enable Additional Data Collection check box.
Click Save.
Manually trigger additional data collection
When you trigger a manual collection, inSync starts collecting data immediately.
Click the global navigation icon to access the Global Navigation Panel and click Data Governance > eDiscovery, and then click Legal Holds on the left pane.
Click the Legal Hold policy name for which you want to trigger additional data collection.
Click the Collection Stream tab.
You will see two entries for each device.Select the data source for which you want to collect data.
Click Collect Now.
❗ Important
The Collect Now option will be available only to custodians who have Mac or Windows devices running inSync Client v6.6.0 and higher versions.
List of supported MIME types
File Category | MIME type |
Archives | application/x-compress |
Databases | application/x-msaccess |
Documents | text/vcard |
Emails | message/rfc822 |
Images | image/tiff |
Media | video/x-flv |
Octet Stream | application/octet-stream |
application/pdf |