Ride the Lightning
Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
Remove Metadata from Acrobat Documents as Part of E-Discovery Readiness?
August 6, 2010
I received an excellent comment from Judi Maier with Omnitek Systems Solutions regarding scrubbing metadata from Acrobat documents. Here's what she said:
Sharon,
First, let me say I have enjoyed your comments at ABA TechShow and have used many of them. Thank you!
To respond to your comment about the Adobe tips for scrubbing documents of metadata versus the metadata scrubber for email, I offer the following. In this era of e-discovery, if the organization’s intent is to always remove all metadata before “using” the document, for example, sharing it with a client or another organization, that policy should be expressed in the organization’s written data retention policies and procedures. Then it should be followed. I would prefer that the adobe document have been scrubbed of all metadata, because if I were served with an e-discovery request, then all I would have to provide is the “scrubbed” version because a) that is the only one I have and b) my policy is in place to protect me. On the other hand, if I keep the “un-scrubbed” version and rely on the metadata scrubbers when I send it out, when faced with an e-discovery request, I will have to produce the “un-scrubbed” version, which I might not wish to do. Further, if the document that resides on my server is the scrubbed version, there is little chance that someone could or would inadvertently send out an “un-scrubbed” one, and I do prefer that level of security, as well. Perhaps it takes a moment or two longer to use the process that Adobe outlined, but in the end, I think it affords a better degree of security for an organization.
Judith Maier, MBA, JD
Judi – You raise two great points. However a company decides to handle metadata, it should be clear in the company's policies, which should be enforced, reviewed annually and constantly underscored to employees through training.
We are beginning to see the process you describe more and more often, where companies will retain documents ONLY as Acrobat documents scrubbed of metadata. This is part of e-discovery readiness for a number of companies, though I would say the number is still small. But it is growing and I expect it will continue to grow. As we everything in e-discovery, the ground is shifting underneath us all time.
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