Page 481 - Handbook of Modern Telecommunications

4-12 CRC Handbook of Modern Telecommunications, Second Edition

• Increased tenacity of litigation: The significant increase in legal compensation associated with ver-
dicts and out-of-court settlements has created a financial incentive for greater tenacity by the legal
profession in its pursuit of “justice.” An important manifestation has been in records discovery—
with special focus on e-records and e-mail—where extremely difficult-to-fulfill requests have
been filed with the objective of creating situations where pretrial settlement becomes preferable to
the cost and burden of complying with discovery orders, regardless of the merits of the dispute.
Perfection is not required in considering actionable solutions. Reasonable measures do not include
keeping every single e-mail for an indefinite period of time. Instead, reasonable measures mean the
development and maintenance of organizational and technical processes that (MARK06):

• Retain electronic information as long as it is needed for legal and ongoing business reasons and in
a manner that allows for efficient search and retrieval.
• Permit the destruction of such information thereafter in accordance with the company’s estab-
lished retention policies and practices.
• Demonstrate that all actions taken in the life cycle of the organization’s electronic records were in
accordance with established policies and procedures.
• Document audit trails of key activities performed, including management oversight, including
who did what and when.
• Provide assurances that the accuracy, reliability, and trustworthiness of records are preserved as
the electronic records are managed over time and through any successive technology upgrades
of migrations.
4.1.3.5 Impact of Compliance
Achieving compliance is a straightforward process that can be easily managed through careful plan-
ning. There are usually four steps to guide companies through the compliance process (SUFF04).
• Step 1: Audit your current system: The first step is to evaluate the current internal control policies
your company has in place and identify any gaps in processes like document retention or approvals.
Use comparison with best practices; the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway
Commission (COSO) can help. COSO is dedicated to improving the quality of financial reporting
and is a valuable resource for companies to meet Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) compliance.
• Step 2: Set a new strategy for internal controls: Step 2 gives you the opportunity to improve your
processes already in effect, investigate ways to simplify procedures and reduce costs, and create
new controls when needed. An effective internal control must strike a balance among people, pro-
cess, and technology. As you develop your new internal control strategy, be sure to consider fac-
tors like the structure and policies supporting your controls, the risks particular to your industry,
internal communication methodology, and monitoring tools like checklists and approval slips.
Successful internal controls touch all aspects of the organization, so make sure to include your
execution team, financial controllers, and systems engineers in the planning process. Be spe-
cific: spell out which managers need to approve each type of document, outline which documents
employees need to keep, detail the method they should use to store this content (whether physical
paperwork or electronic files), and specify how long these documents or files need to be retained.
• Step 3: Adopt the right technology to support your new controls: Companies should consider
implementing technology, such as an enterprise content management (ECM) solution as a central
part of any compliance strategy and to accelerate compliance efforts. An ECM workflow solu-
tion enables companies to turn the newly created rules into an easy-to-follow process that help
guide and educate employees through the new internal control rules. ECM tools are invaluable
because they empower companies to archive data, retrieve it easily, based on any number of cri-
teria, and specify permanent deletion dates when documents are no longer needed. In case of an
audit, ECM tools give companies the power to locate records immediately, removing the high