Extract from Jason L. Covey’s article “Modern Attachments in M365 eDiscovery: How Much Do They Really Matter?”
Introduction
eDiscovery has seen substantial transformation recently, characterized by the introduction of complex and continuously evolving data types. This shift has been primarily driven by rapid innovations in technology and the widespread adoption of a new generation of business applications. In the current eDiscovery landscape, no more influential or problematic data source exists than Microsoft Teams and its emergence as “the new email.”
In addition to the messaging features, Teams unleashed the widespread usage of so-called “modern attachments” (also referred to as “cloud attachments” in certain areas of Microsoft’s documentation and UIs). Rather than providing the actual attachment, such as a Word or PDF file directly attached to a legacy email, the modern attachment exists as a hyperlink to the source file in OneDrive or SharePoint, to which granular controls can be applied.
A central purpose of modern attachments (as with Google Drive document hyperlinks familiar to Gmail users) is to provide enhanced security access controls down to the document level to better address data security, privacy, loss prevention, etc. Although an essential pursuit in the age of data breaches and expanding privacy legislation, the net results collide with the long-established obligations of eDiscovery – disclosure, completeness, process transparency, and defensibility.
Further, modern attachments are not limited to Microsoft Teams and can also appear in the context of Microsoft email.
In that way, and as part of the “new normal” in eDiscovery, it can be said that modern email is becoming more like Teams and not the other way around.
