In honor of our latest major release to Donoma StoneScribe: commentary on Adam Famularo’s recent Forbes article: The Evolution of Data Governance  that looks ahead to the real value of communications data governance.

Data Retention Needs to Evolve.

From its origins in bulky databases sequestered by IT; data retention is poised to become more than a safety net. Its time has come as a means to deliver innovation, along with security and compliance. Retained data is valuable. It can drive insight and collaboration. Create engagement across organizations. A better use of resources than continuing to manage silos of data retained in the hopes of never seeing it again.

More Than Compliance

As Famularo states, “…data governance is no longer optional because it underpins data security, compliance and privacy. While regulatory compliance and risk mitigation are key drivers, the reality is that data governance is a strategic component of an organization’s digital and business transformation journey.”

Yes, litigation and regulations have been the stick; but insight and innovation are today’s powerful carrots. Until now, preservation of electronic communications was driven by a culture of fear, not of innovation. Data was banished into cumbersome retention systems that have more in common with the Eagles’ Hotel California. Data checks in, but rarely does anyone want to see it again.

The Time is Now

Yes, I have a dog in this hunt. Seven years ago, Donoma Software released StoneScribe, a very agile, secure retention product for Cisco Jabber XMPP data. We saw a need not to just fill a niche gap, but to build a more agile retention product. One that could be both secure and easy to use, by people outside of IT. We saw the opportunity to make the data more useful throughout an organization. So, we focused. Refined our architecture. Listened to the challenges of our clients. Embraced cloud and host of new security needs. Then take that capability and go bigger.

Innovate: with a Link to Legacy

With our newest release, we are opening up our communications retention platform to deliver on this vision. We are embracing communication streams beyond Cisco, and soon, beyond XMPP data. All while making it easy to integrate with legacy data repositories.

In the end, the article sums the opportunity of this new engagement model of data best:

“…an organization’s success is not measured by how much data it gathers; rather, it depends on how well it uses it. By embracing data governance as part of the culture, data intelligence can help you ensure that your company’s data is actively being put to good use.”

We could not agree more.

StoneScribe’s Spring 19 Release Heralds Big Changes

Seven years ago, Donoma Software released our first version of StoneScribe to address the very real gap we saw in the market for secure retention of Cisco Jabber XMPP data. Based on our prior experience building solutions to retain voicemail data, we saw a need not to just fill a niche gap, but to build a more agile retention platform. One that could be both secure and easy to use, by people outside of IT. We saw the opportunity to make the data more useful throughout an organization. So, we focused. Refined our architecture. Listened to the challenges of our clients. Embraced cloud and host of new security needs.

With our latest release, we take all that we have learned and we’re ready to deliver what the market has asked for:  StoneScribe’s ability, security and agility with more integration.

Innovation: with a Link to Legacy

With this newest release, we are opening up StoneScribe to deliver on this vision. We are embracing communication streams beyond Cisco Jabber. All while making it easy to integrate with legacy data repositories.

Want to learn more?  Join us Thursday, May 9th at 2 PM Eastern when we’ll discuss what makes this release so powerful and where we plan to go from here.

Learn more: Beyond Compliance: The Dawn of Agile Data Retention

This morning, LegalTech News ran a timely story on the case between Central European News and Buzzfeed over allegations of fake news. (Leidig v. Buzzfeed) Fake news is news these days, but what got our attention was discussion of the shifts from the court in the willingness to tolerate improper records retention, that resulted in spoliation, incomplete production, and the assertions from the bench that attempting to hide (or distract) the ball when it comes to E-Discovery is an outmoded strategy that needs to end.

In particular, we noted a couple of key points in the article that surface in some of our technical conversations about our retention solutions.

1. No special effort was made to preserve document concerning the Buzzfeed piece. ”Plaintiff “was instructed by counsel to preserve evidence only evidence only after the lawsuit was filed.”

With the increased ease of communications retention, the argument that it is too expensive or not a high enough priority is one we commonly see. The Information Security and Compliance staff often are proactive in trying to address retention but are often shut down by others in the organization who do not yet see the need. Often the conversation changes radically once a team has had to go through a production effort, at which point data may no longer even exist. Most organizations can expect legal action as a course of business. Judges are signaling that a lack of retention is not an acceptable practice.

2. Metadata was inadvertently modified and deleted when the plaintiff attempted to manually move files to a production repository.

What happened here was spoliation: data was moved from one location to another in such a way that the metadata was modified or even removed. Here’s a real-world impact of what can happen when a technical decision to treat data in a more casual unstructured manner has repercussions to the bottom line. Often people look at our retention solutions; and then try to go and make low cost workarounds that involve pushing or copying data from one system to another without understanding the impact to not only the record, but the impact when challenged in court. We see it time and again, and we’ve yet to see a long term successful outcome when attempting to short-cut proper retention protocols.

However, technology is just part of the issue. In a recent judges’ report cited in this article, “30 active federal judges said the problem with e-discovery for most attorneys isn’t process or technology, it’s an overly adversarial mindset. When asked how attorneys could best improve e-discovery practices, the No. 1 response given was “cooperating with opposing counsel.”

Legal counsel likely fears what exists in their data, or the effort to review and produce. In reality, proactive retention with technology like our Communications Archiving Suite can help organizations respond faster at lower cost because data can be found, and put into context while maintaining good records retention hygiene.

We agree. ” It’s not personal, it’s E-Discovery.”

Retention & management of voicemails is an increasingly common conversation within even un-regulated organizations.  Ever since unified messaging made it possible to email a voicemail; managing voicemails has become a challenge.

Donoma StoneScribe provides easy, flexible Jabber instant message records archiving & compliance.  It enables secure, accountable policy-driven record retention, along with the ability to search, filter, restore and report on those records.

Today we are announcing our latest release: StoneScribe 3.2.5.

This release adds expanded options for record searching, filtering & production along with the ability to now archive files shared as part of a conversation.

If you are an existing StoneScribe client, you can request your maintenance update anytime by contacting our Support team at: support@donomasoftware.com.

Ready to learn more? 

Contact your local Cisco reseller or contact us for more information or to schedule a solution demo for your organization.

First NZ Capital of Auckland, New Zealand needed to balance rapid communications made possible with Cisco Jabber instant messaging with compliance.  They turned to Donoma StoneScribe to solve their compliance requirement, and found they gained more than mere compliance.

>> Read more

Donoma StoneScribe provides easy, flexible Jabber chat records archiving & compliance.  It enables secure, accountable policy-driven record retention of Cisco Jabber chat threads,along with the ability to search, filter, restore and report on those message records.

Today we are announcing our latest release: StoneScribe 3.2.4.

This release adds  support for Cisco Unified Communication Manager 11 and Cisco IM & Presence 11 to keep our interoperability commitments.  Additionally, records administrators can now work with an even larger set of records at one time.

If you are an existing StoneScribe client, you can request your maintenance update anytime by contacting our Support team at: support@donomasoftware.com.

Ready to learn more? 

Contact your local Cisco reseller or contact us for more information or to schedule a solution demo for your organization.

Donoma Message Vault provides easy, flexible voicemail archiving for the Cisco phone platform.  It enables secure, accountable policy-driven record retention of voicemail,along with the ability to search, filter, restore and report on those message records.

Today we are announcing our latest release: Message Vault 3.2.07.

This release adds  support for Cisco Unity Connection Clustering & Failover to ensure our enterprise implementations have a full range of configuration options for their enterprise voice platforms.

Additionally, we have added support for TLS encryption for those who prefer that as an alternative to SSL.

If you are an existing Message Vault client, you can request your maintenance update anytime by contacting our Support team at: support@donomasoftware.com.

Ready to learn more? 

Contact your local Cisco reseller or contact us for more information or to schedule a solution demo for your organization.

MediaScribe provides secure, policy-driven archiving & records management of Cisco MediaSense call recordings.

Our 10.0.3 latest release brings several key features that enhances MediaSense implementations with additional records management benefits.  These include:

• Support for 2 way video call recordings. Now you can retain audio and video recordings and replay them seamlessly.
• New licensing model based on concurrent sessions. License just by the number of simultaneous sessions needed.
• Support for multiple sequential storage locations gives great flexibility for mapping additional storage locations.
• Even larger storage volume support available now with available support of VMWare vSphere ESX 5.5.

Ready to learn more? 

Contact your local Cisco reseller or contact us for more information or to schedule a solution demo for your organization.

_{StoneScribe is our records management & archiving solution for organizations wishing to manage their Jabber Instant Message records being delivered by the on-premise (IM & Presence Server) product.}

StoneScribe’s latest release (3.2.3)  features focus on compliance functionality and ease of use. Here’s a quick summary of why now more than ever, StoneScribe helps your organization not only address legal and compliance issues, but make it even easier to mine important data from interactions across your organization, both internal and external:

Keyword Smart Actions:

This is our very favorite new feature in this release, and it likely will be yours. Here’s why: now you can designate keywords that will automatically trigger a selection of options.

Auto-tag: Designate certain keywords to be automatically tagged. This expedites future searches and eliminates the need for manual management.

Keyword alert: If a particular keyword is recorded in a message, alerts are sent to designated administrators.

Audit logging: If a particular keyword is recorded in a message, the incident is logged in the audit reports.

File Shredding:

(U.S. Dept. of Defense (DoD) compliant.)  Administrators have the option now to enable DoD level file shredding when records are destroyed at the end of their life. Who needs this? Anyone who has to certify that their data cannot be reconstituted later by forensic means once the record has been deleted.

1 click Troubleshooting Support:  

Hopefully you never need our tech support, but in case you do, we’ve made it very easy for any Administrator to send in the error logs with just one click to help us troubleshoot a problem.  No technical expertise required.

API available:  

Want to integrate your StoneScribe records management into other records management systems your organization uses? With this release now we offer an API to support that need.

More optimization for storage efficiency:

Audit trails and system logs will auto archive every 30 days to keep your StoneScribe system performing at its maximum speed.

As always, this upgrade is available at no additional charge to our existing clients.

If you aren’t yet running StoneScribe yet, but want to learn more, visit our product information page to see the full list of current features.

If you have any questions, or would like to see a demo, please contact us or your Cisco Reseller today!