Case Study: Document Retention Policy and Litigation Hold Notices

Purpose

The purpose of this project is to provide you with an opportunity to create a document retention policy. You will also learn how to serve a litigation hold notice for an educational institute. The following aspects of litigation and document retention are covered:

§ Applicability of confidentiality, integrity, and availability (C-I-A) concepts

§ Confidentiality of personal information and contracts

§ Applicability of American Legal System in the litigation process involving corporate, public, and private institutions

§ Intellectual property (IP) issues

§ Risk analysis and incident response procedures

§ Forensics examination

Required Source Information and Tools

The following tools and resources will be needed to complete this project are the following:

• Course textbook
• Internet access for research
• Project text sheet

Learning Objectives and Outcomes

You will gain an understanding of the aspects involved in the conception, enforcement, and implementation of security policies. You will also gain insight to risk analysis and will learn how to respond to any given situation that might arise from a violation of those security policies.

Project Logistics

The project is assigned in Lesson 10 of the course and is due for submission in Lesson 16.

Project Introduction

Scenario:
You are the Chief Information Officer for Premier College. Recently, your college has received a notice from the Department of Education about an investigation of your college based on the state-specific testing and compliance procedures. The Department of Education has sent a Litigation Hold Notice wherein they have asked all college staff and administrators of the college to preserve all relevant documents, records, data, contracts (regardless of its location or medium), and correspondence notes.

To understand the litigation hold notice received from the Department of Education, refer to the documents titled “Project.TS1.doc” and “Project.TS2.doc.” As a reminder, this Litigation Hold preservation obligation supersedes any existing statutory or regulatory document retention period or destructive schedule. The determination of what information may be potentially relevant is based upon content and substance and generally does not depend on the type of medium in which the information exists.

The information requested may exist in various forms, including paper records, hand-written notes, telephone log entries, e-mail, and other electronic communications (including VoiceMail), word processing documents (including drafts, spreadsheets, databases, and calendars), telephone logs, electronic address books, personal digital assistant (PDA) like Palm Pilots and BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, Droid, Internet usage files, systems manuals, and network access information in their original format.

All electronically stored information (ESI) should be preserved in its originally created, or “native” format, along with related metadata. Relevant backup tapes and all indexes for those tapes should also be preserved. Reasonably accessible information must also be preserved, because such sources will need to be identified under compelling circumstances, and may need to be produced. If you have any doubts as to whether specific information is responsive, err on the side of preserving that information.

Tasks:

After receiving the Litigation Hold Notice, your next task is to produce original documents for the following:

§ Create a document retention policy for your College that complies with all state and Federal regulations. (Week 4)

§ Create a Litigation Hold Notice similar to the one provided to you in the handout called “L10.Project.TS1.doc.” (Week 5)

§ Create a checklist of procedures that must be followed in order to comply with the Litigation Hold Notice. (Week 6)

§ Prepare a summary of all your findings in a Microsoft Word document (Font: Arial, 10; Line Spacing: Double). (Week 7)

Evaluation Criteria and Rubrics

Case Study Schedule:
Week 4: Document retention policy due

Week 5: Litigation Hold Notice due

Week 6: Checklist of procedures due

Week 7: Summary Paper

Details of Summary Paper (21%): Prepare a 8-10 page summary paper in Microsoft Word (counts as 21% of the final grade) in APA format with 5-10 references (see writing expectations in the Policies section) (250 words per page). This paper must include the week 4, 5 and 6 assignments as sections of document for grading. Your summary should refer to the prior assignments within the document.

Grading: Grading Rubric will be used to evaluate your paper along with the APA manual.

Papers which exceed a similarity score of 30 per cent will not be graded !!

APA Tips

Paragraphs average 3-5 sentences in length

Reference all statements of fact

At least 1 reference per paragraph as a rule of thumb

Font size and style consistent

No first person (I, we, us, etc.)

Past tense only

Double spaced

First of paragraph indented