CAS-001 · Question #20
On Monday, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of a state agency received an e-discovery request for the release of all emails sent and received by the agency board of directors for the past five…
The correct answer is A. Data retention policy. The data retention policy has the greatest impact on e-discovery fulfillment because it governs what data is kept, for how long, and in what form. If the organization's policy only mandates retaining emails for two or three years, emails from four or five years ago may have…
Question
On Monday, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of a state agency received an e-discovery request for the release of all emails sent and received by the agency board of directors for the past five years. The CIO has contacted the email administrator and asked the administrator to provide the requested information by end of day on Friday. Which of the following has the GREATEST impact on the ability to fulfill the e-discovery request?
Options
- AData retention policy
- BBackup software and hardware
- CEmail encryption software
- DData recovery procedures
How the community answered
(29 responses)- A76% (22)
- B3% (1)
- C10% (3)
- D10% (3)
Explanation
The data retention policy has the greatest impact on e-discovery fulfillment because it governs what data is kept, for how long, and in what form. If the organization's policy only mandates retaining emails for two or three years, emails from four or five years ago may have been legally and permanently deleted-making it impossible to fulfill the five-year request regardless of any other technical capability. Option B (backup software/hardware) is secondary; backups are only useful if the retention policy mandated keeping the data in the first place. Option C (email encryption) can complicate retrieval but does not determine whether data exists; encrypted data that was retained can still be decrypted and produced. Option D (data recovery procedures) is relevant only if data exists but is inaccessible-if the retention policy purged it, recovery is not possible. Data retention policy is the foundational determinant of e-discovery capability.
Topics
Community Discussion
No community discussion yet for this question.