Keeping metadata in an immutable way
I found an interesting article that explains that a new ruling in the US is forcing companies to preserve their metadata in an immutable way. (NOTE: metadata describes how, when and by whom a particular set of data was collected and how the data is formatted. It is essential for understanding information stored in data warehouses and has become increasingly important in, for example, XML-based Web applications).
In the court case referred in the article (Aguilar v. Immigration & Customs Enforcement Div. of U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Sec.), a U.S. District Court ruled that metadata associated with e-mails and electronic files must be preserved, maintained and produced in the course of legal discovery.
The Aguilar decision emphasizes the importance of metadata preservation in the course of e-discovery. Metadata can be used for authentication, search and analysis while also offering evidential value such as when the file was created or accessed. This ruling shows that organizations now must be ready to present metadata if requested, and it should be kept and preserved in a way that its legal admissibility is not questioned. In other words, organizations must be able to unquestionably prove that metadata is trustworthy and was preserved in an immutable way.
One solution for that would be being prepared to retain more information on WORM format, as this can help preserve the data and metadata. However, using Kinamik Secure Audit Vault is a more efficient and cheaper alternative for preserving data with integrity (i.e. it can not be altered) than WORM disks. By using Kinamik’s solution, organizations can use any normal disk to achieve immutability of their data with a software.
Once again, this is the proof for the need of anti-tampering solutions.
Tags: court rules, immutable, metadata