Three important new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure will take effect on December 1, 2006, in the United States, unless Congress disapproves:

• Rules 26 and 34 define electronically stored information and specify the form in which electronically stored information is produced.
• Rule 37 specifies when information may be disposed of and when it must be preserved because of pending litigation.

Under these new rules, parties may argue what electronically stored information is relevant and how it is produced, but no longer can electronically stored information be excluded from litigation. Also, there’s no excuse for destroying electronic information when litigation is pending. Electronically stored information shall be treated the same as paper documents.

In the short term, companies will continue to respond to electronic discovery requests on a case-by-case basis. Longer term, a more economical approach to electronic discovery of all electronically stored information is needed. Look for new products from existing and new vendors to fill this demand.

You can read the complete description of the new rules (PDF).

… Bob Spurzem

You might think it’s services like Vonage that are driving VoIP use among consumers.

Instant messaging is much more important. Many instant messaging services have added VoIP connectivity, and the marriage of IM and presence with VoIP is very natural. In fact, the best-known VoIP service, Skype, is as much an IM network as a VoIP service.

The number of regular users illustrates this:

• Vonage has about 2 million regular users.
• Skype says it has over 110 million "customers." It probably has about 30 million regular users, of which about 7 million are online at any time.
• AOL, MSN, and Yahoo perhaps have another 50 million regular VoIP users.

… David Ferris

Journaling exists in current versions of Microsoft Exchange. In Exchange 2007, journaling is much more flexible.

Journaling — not to be confused with database logging — currently involves keeping a copy of all email sent and received by a mailbox store. In Exchange 2007, journaling can be configured per mailbox store (database), per distribution list, or per user. All messages can be journaled or just those sent internally or externally. Messages can be journaled based on message sender, recipient, or content.

Exchange journaling is used by third-party email archiving solutions to capture email for compliance. Be careful when enabling journaling. It increases server load up to 35% and may require dedicated server resources. Refer to this TechNet article for more information.

… Bob Spurzem

In September, VoxLib plans to launch Vox for Skype. This runs on your PC and extends Skype to your mobile phone. From your mobile, you can call your PC and:

• See who’s online
• Make Skype calls
• Get your Skype voicemail
• Make international PSTN calls via SkypeOut

The main benefit will probably be the ability to make cheap international calls from your mobile, usually over "free" plan minutes.

Skype’s got a growing third-party ecosystem; VoxLib illustrates. For more, see the Skype Extras Gallery. That in turn helps to make Skype even more attractive.

… David Ferris

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Managed Folders Adds Retention Capability to Exchange 2007

Reconnex is a young firm focused on detecting and managing the risks of insider threats. Founded in 2003, it has some 70 staff. The firm says customers include WebEx, George Washington University, and Maimonides Medical Center.

Reconnex’s product, iGuard, is a content monitoring appliance. It has two very interesting capabilities:

• Monitoring and scanning in real time of sent content across all protocols and ports. This capability is particularly useful in that errant SMTP email content usually scanned only on port 25 would be detected when redirected to any other port.
• Capturing of policy-defined content in a database. The database can then be used as an investigation tool. For example, when an employee leaves the company the database can be queried to determine exactly what the employee sent to whom in the weeks prior to departure. The database can also be used to find out where information is sent; for example, if malware is gathering and sending out a company’s login and password information to a foreign country in which the company does not do business.

… Nancy Cox

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Email Archiving Embraces Instant Messaging

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Log File Replication Simplifies Exchange Disaster Recovery

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Access to Archived Data Assists Mobile Workforce

If a credit card company were to send statements by email, it might be able to identify which customers are getting into financial difficulties. That’s the interesting claim made by email encryption company Identum.

The argument goes like this: When card issuers send paper statements to people, they’re usually opened quickly. However, when people are getting into financial trouble, they often go into denial. This causes them to ignore card statements, putting them in a pile somewhere, unopened.

What if the card issuer had some way of knowing that statements were going unread? That would be an early warning that there’s a problem. This, of course, relies on card issuers having two important capabilities:

• A secure way of emailing statements to customers
• A reliable way of getting read receipts back

But what about online banking? Wouldn’t people prefer to just read their statements online? Some would, but others seem to prefer to have statements "pushed" to them in email. … Richi Jennings, with thanks to Identum’s Andy Dancer