One of the consequences of enterprise IT and lines of business using web-based collaboration tools is that some history is not ‘stored away’. Or, if it is, the formats and contents are not structured such that many enterprises can process them efficiently. In this post, a popular web-based tool, Slack is discussed, and similar requirements are presented for others as well.
There are many reasons why preserving project and team results are important. Here are a few key reasons:
1) Documenting the development of intellectual property kept trade secret, patented, or that will be combined into other intellectual property
2) Documenting background information that meets regulatory requirements or needed in response to a regulatory inquiry
3) Meeting GDPR requirements for records with employee information
4) Retaining records for business ventures (joint ventures, business partnerships, sales channels, etc.)
5) Storing records that have direct importance for HR purposes
6) Keeping documentation available that will need to be accessed in the course of litigation
Slack has multiple levels of retention and backups available. These depend on:
A) The subscription plan used (Standard, Plus, and Enterprise)
B) The retention options chosen (Workspace or Organization)
C) The settings for Shared Channels (see documentation)
D) The presence of links/shared applications data/files (files shared from Google Drive, or Dropbox and handled in specific ways)
Since many enterprise IT and legal teams don’t have control of all these uses and settings problems will be seen soon. Then, if you have a ‘backup’, these come down in a compressed file (with JSON objects compressed). Are you prepared for the costs of eDiscovery, compliance, or inhouse reviews for even one of these? As personnel departures are almost certain in current conditions these costs and risks must be handled immediately.
Action Today:
A) If your enterprise uses Slack or other on-web tools, get backups today.
B) If your enterprise is subject to regulations and does not have retention policies approved by legal in place, then put full retention in place until legal can act.
C) If your enterprise has paid, trial, and unpaid use of many web-based tools for teams and projects, then put rules in place for getting these identified such that legal and regulatory risks are minimized.
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