Managing Microsoft Teams Records for Compliance and Legal Purposes

With over 100,000 users connecting every minute, Microsoft Teams has become the go-to communication platform for organizations worldwide. Its widespread adoption can be attributed to the surge in remote work at the onset of the pandemic. The chart below shows the number of daily active MS Teams users growing significantly in 2020, with the trend continuing in 2021 and 2022. Microsoft Teams now boast over 300 million users. Source: https://www.communicationsquare.com/news/microsoft-teams-vs-slack/

To shed light on the management of dynamic electronically stored information (ESI) and its impact on legal and compliance processes, Pagefreezer hosted a webinar featuring Mike Quartararo from ACEDS (Assocation of Certified E-Discovery Specialists), Michael Simon from Seventh Samurai Legal Consulting, and Peter Callaghan from Pagefreezer. During this webinar, they shared learnings from a recent report focusing on dynamic data trends in e-Discovery and shared their thoughts on those findings.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has updated their Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs policy with special attention paid to messaging platforms when detecting and investigating potential misconduct and law violations. Moving forward, they will now consider whether corporate policies ensure communications from these apps are accessible and amenable to preservation.

How to Export Teams Chats for Compliance and eDiscovery Exporting Microsoft Teams chat data for legal and compliance purposes is a critical task that can seem like a Herculean effort to execute—especially if you have days, months, or even years worth of MS Teams messages to export. Thankfully, there are a number of different methods and tools that extract and preserve relevant data from Teams.

Investment firms and other financial institutions are subject to the strict recordkeeping and communication regulations laid out by both the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The goal of these regulations is to protect the industry and its customers—and both bodies are willing to impose hefty fines if they believe a firm has stepped out of line.

If you’re an attorney, a paralegal, an investigator, a law enforcement officer, or even if you just watch a lot of legal dramas on television, you’re likely familiar with the term “chain of custody”. Essentially, maintaining a “chain of custody” means validating how evidence has been gathered, tracked, and preserved prior to being entered into a case. In both civil and criminal litigation, maintaining a clear chain of custody is critical to the admission of key evidence.