The 8 Most Important Things a Records Manager Must Know to Be Smart About Information Governance | Steve Weissman

Am I the only one who is bothered by organizations’ tendency to dismiss records manages as nothing more than glorified librarians? (Never mind; I know I’m not.)

The truth is, the precepts and disciplines they adhere to extend far beyond simple classification, and in fact are linchpins of successful information governance as well.

If you’re a records manager seeking to break out of the corner you’re so often put into, then here are a few pieces of painfully-gained wisdom that you might use to your great advantage.

>Click here for the things a records manager needs to know.

Text Analytics: The Next Generation of Big Data | Jeff Catlin

Sensors, tweets, emails, web clickstreams, CRM information, supply chain tools – data is flooding into every business, and the businesses that have the most facile processes for divining actionable information from the deluge are going to be the businesses that make the most money. This data deluge is not just a problem for large enterprises. Small businesses also interact with their customers using many channels and have websites, databases and often large amounts of other data to analyze. Hence all the buzz around “big data.” But what does that phrase actually mean, and how does it apply to your business?

>Click here for more on text analytics and big data.

‘Go Where the Puck Will Be’: Snowden Team Leader | Byron Connolly

Canadian ice hockey player, Wayne Gretzky, was once quoted as saying: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

Former US intelligence expert, Keith Lowry, has advised organisations to take the same approach when protecting their networks against cyber security breaches.

“Until we [adopt] that thought processes within our organisations, we are always going to be chasing a puck instead of being able to prevent or use it to our advantage,” he told attendees at the Information Governance and Ediscovery Summit in Sydney.

>Click here for more on proactive cybersecurity.

Facial Recognition Technology is Everywhere. It May Not be Legal | Ben Sobel

Privacy advocates and representatives from companies like Facebook and Google are meeting in Washington to try to set rules for how companies should use this powerful technology. They may be forgetting that a good deal of it could already be illegal.

There are no federal laws that specifically govern the use of facial recognition technology. But while few people know it, and even fewer are talking about it, both Illinois and Texas have laws against using such technology to identify people without their informed consent.

>Click here for more on facial recognition technology.

No Rest for the Wicked in Cyber Security's 'New Normal' | Automated Trader

When a financial services audience at last week's FIA IDX conference was asked whether their company would make a cyberattack public, you could hear the crickets.

"I don't think it would make any sense to (publicise)," said Paul Marks, global head of Electronic Trading Product, Citigroup Global Markets. "All you are going to do is open yourself up as someone who is potentially vulnerable and put a lot of attention on yourself, if anyone that does have bad intent to try and find weakness in the organisation."

In Europe, regulators have "got it right", Marks added, by adopting a closed door approach under MiFID II, which requires notification to the competent authority in cases of material breaches.

>Click here for more on cybersecurity in the financial sector.

Technology Commercialization: 5 Definitions | @ComplexD

Emerging technologies often represent new and innovative approaches to solving difficult problems. They also may have a significantly positive impact on the time, money, and resources required to complete previously daunting tasks. Yet until emerging technologies are effectively commercialized, they may offer users as much peril as promise.

>Click here for more on technology commercialization.

Vendors in Educational Clothing? | Greg Buckles

Not sure if you heard about all the rain and flooding down here in Houston, but that is just one reason for my recent hiatus from blogging. Once life takes you away from your routine, it is hard to get back in the saddle, but press releases like this one from OLP give me all the incentive I need to write. Now you know that I hate to pick on any one vendor when my real concern is a broader trend that I want to call your attention to. In this case, it is the way that some for-profit providers effectively cloak their true nature and revenue source by presenting themselves as ‘organizations’, ‘associations’, ‘reference models’, ‘institutes’ or other labels intended to convey academic authority.

>Click here for more on vendors in educational clothing.

eDiscovery Is Moving to the Cloud | Derek Schueren

“Software is eating the world.” That’s what Marc Andreessen wrote in a brilliant piece back in 2011. From retail to transportation and energy to finance, the world is being transformed by technology and software is leading the charge.

So what about eDiscovery? Why hasn’t software eaten eDiscovery? Software has certainly tried, and one could argue it has taken a significant bite out of the market. But software has not yet eaten eDiscovery. Manual tasks and inefficiencies still remain a problem. Intense pressure along with short timelines and high stakes don’t allow for much time to “rethink the process.” This is an industry of survival; get things done quickly and don’t make any mistakes.

>Click here for more on eDiscovery in the cloud.

Marauders Map: A Facebook Messenger Tool for Stalkers | Sharon Nelson, Esq.

Naked Security carried an ominous story about a Chrome browser extension developed by Harvard College computer science student Aran Khanna which allows people to pinpoint and track the location of Facebook Messenger users.

The extension, called Marauders Map after the magical chart from the Harry Potter books that reveals the location of every person within Hogwarts School, works by collecting the location data of Facebook Messenger users and plotting it on a map.

That Facebook has that data at its disposal is probably no surprise to anyone, but the ease with which it can be extracted, and the accuracy with which it can track someone - to within just one meter - may come as a shock.

>Click here for more on online tracking.

Court Declines to Compel Production of Backup Tapes, Active Emails in Native Format | K&L Gates

In this case, the court addressed Plaintiffs’ demands that Defendants restore ESI contained on disaster recovery backup tapes for production in native format and produce active emails in native format with metadata. Upon finding the backup tapes inaccessible, the court undertook the relevant cost-shifting analysis and determined that if Plaintiffs wanted production of the contents of the backup tapes in native format, they would be responsible for the cost. The court also determined that TIFF images were a reasonable format for production and declined to compel production of active emails in native format or production of metadata. Accordingly, “Plaintiffs’ requests for the production of Backup Databases, the Active Emails in Native, and the Metadata” were denied without prejudice.

>Click here for more on production requests.