Cobalt Iron Assigned Patent for Techniques Fulfilling E-Discovery Requests From Backup Storage

Cobalt Iron Inc. received a patent for its techniques related to electronic discovery (e-discovery) when searching for data in backup storage.

Further proof of the company’s advanced enterprise-data discipline capabilities, this patent represents the firm’s approach to managing backup data sets to facilitate e-discovery requests. As a result, CIOs, data custodians, compliance officers, systems administrators, backup administrators, and other IT professionals who use the company’s Adaptive Data Protection platform can fulfill e-discovery requests more quickly and cost-effectively, with data discipline.

In today’s business and regulatory climate, it is essential for enterprises to be able to respond to e-discovery requests in a timely, comprehensive, and cost-efficient manner. Among the largest data targets for e-discovery searches in most enterprises are backup data sets, which typically contain copies and versions of all key corporate data. Performing e-discovery data searches on these enterprise backup data sets can be complex, time-consuming, and very costly. Enterprise data custodians struggle with balancing the demands of legal e-discovery requests against the challenges and costs of performing the searches.

Adaptive Data Protection platform
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Patent unveils novel techniques for facilitating e-discovery in backup data including:

• Extracting metadata from a backup data set for e-discovery

• Identifying a subset of data within a backup data set associated with an e-discovery request

• Performing data reduction on data targeted by an e-discovery request

• Preserving a native file format and a chain of custody for each data item in a backup data set identified by an e-discovery request

• Applying e-discovery and backup policies to data identified by an e-discovery request

• Automatically copying e-discovery data that is about to be deleted or modified within a backup storage

“Cobalt Iron’s new e-discovery techniques bring insights and efficiencies to corporate data custodians, allowing them to manage e-discovery requests more effectively and introduce new levels of data discipline,” said Richard Spurlock, CEO and founder, Cobalt Iron. “Preserving native file formats, maintaining a chain of custody, and applying e-discovery policy for each data item identified by an e-discovery request greatly simplifies the arduous tasks associated with regulatory compliance.“

The patent, issued on July 2, 2019, is known as U.S. Patent 10,339,099.