Business Insurance recently published an article summarizing a presentation made at the International Risk Management Institutes Inc’s Cyber & Privacy Risk Conference, held in San Francisco last week. The article summarized the comments made by Sarah Stephens, the Assistant VP of Aon Risk Solutions. For those of you who continue to rely more and more on these devices for your everyday work, it is worth your time to read the article and think about how it may impact your own business or legal practice in the future. (See article)
While the presentation focuses on the problem from an insurance risk perspective, it can be easily viewed directly from the perspective of discovery and evidence, which impact our lives as eDiscovery experts. The really interesting point of her presentation was the vast amount of data there is on our cell phones that we don’t think about until it is too late.
With the explosion of mobile technologies, increasing use of social media by businesses, shifts to cloud computing, and other emerging trends and technologies, businesses are interacting with consumers in ways that break down traditional barriers to communication. At the same time, they also open themselves up to inherently greater risks, particularly to their reputation and financial success.
One of the focuses of Ms. Stephens’s discussion was the casual nature in which we treat our communication devices, particularly Smartphone’s and other portable communication devices. “We take it out of our pocket, set it down and look away”, she said at one point. None of us are thinking about the vast quantities of data that the devices contain that can so easily be stolen or misplaced. Perhaps even more importantly from a legal perspective, we don’t think very hard about the kind of information that is on our phones that might hurt us during litigation if it is discoverable.
We tend to think of the information on our phones as personal, not a concern of business and non-discoverable, even when the phone is issued by and paid for by the organization we work for. After all, no one expects any repercussions from having a ‘private’ phone conversation about a company policy or a competitive strategy decision…until a litigation matter arises, your phone becomes a discovery item and the parameters of all your calls, emails and texts that you have exchanged ‘privately’ become part of the case. When the opposition begins to ask questions about the communications that appear on your phone, the angry text messages you exchanged with a colleague about a new corporate policy or a competitors position as it relates to your business, the impact will finally hit home.
Smartphones and other communication devices have changed the way we do business, and mostly for the better. But we need to learn to think about them the same we would about writing a formal communication on company letterhead. Would you write that text message the same way if you were going to distribute a formal memo? If not, perhaps you should think twice about the content before you text, tweet or call.
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