MACINTOSH REVIEW-READY SERVICE

Macintosh computers are now increasingly common in the enterprise. This is especially true for executives and other key players who find Macs simpler and cooler than most Windows PCs.

With this influx comes the need to handle the electronic information generated on Macs in safe, defensible, and repeatable ways during discovery.

Current e-discovery software can’t handle Mac-based data. Errors such as “unknown format,” “unsupported format,” and the enigmatic “corrupt” are common.

We are experts in handling Mac data, and we will enable your e-discovery software of choice to ingest and analyze Mac data easily and accurately.

The Mac Data Problem

The difference in Mac-based data is driving e-discovery teams crazy, as “platform incompatibility” has not been shown to be an acceptable defense. The data are there, but in a different format and only a manual process can find, ingest, and convert it to data that’s usable to e-discovery tools. Doing this is not only highly time consuming, but very likely to destroy or lose the metadata so critical to chain of custody and validation.

File Types

In addition, in some instances files with the same extension are for very different kinds of files. PST files are email data in Windows, but are GarageBand files in OS X so, unless you’re in the music industry, Mac PST files are unlikely to be relevant to your discovery process. We eliminate the need for a manual review process when discovery tools alone can’t understand the difference between PST files in OSX versus Windows may require a manual review process to correct the problem.

Key Mac and Windows Differences in Core Programs

One of the largest differences between Mac and Windows office suites—which are still mostly Microsoft Office, even though many Mac users employ the Apple suite of office software—is that Outlook and Entourage (email and calendaring for PC and Mac, respectively) have a fundamental difference in how they store data. Entourage keeps emails in one database, causing most e-discovery tools to return errors rather than data.

Native Mac applications also cause significant challenges for e-discovery software and teams. Apple Mail, iCal, and documents from the iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote), which aren’t supported by e-discovery software, can’t just be ignored during the discovery process. Their data must be found and preserved.

How to Solve this Dilemma?

We have a suite of tools and our specialized processes that enable you to convert Mac-based files to formats readable by e-discovery tools. We make it simple for the entire e-discovery team.

Our process provides the following elements:

• Native files that don’t need any action.

• Files that would be otherwise unreadable (Mac mail, iWorks, iChat, etc.) are made readable by any e-discovery tools. This comes with the original native and the converted preview.

• A load file containing extracted metadata that allows for smooth loading of unsupported file types into discovery tools so they can be reviewed without errors.