Cowen Group Leadership Roundtable on IG, the Cloud

The Cowen Group returned to San Francisco this week for its breakfast leadership roundtable series. David Cowen organizes these events around the country to bring together thought leaders to share and exchange ideas on major e-discovery issues.

Corporate participants from Google, Apple, Genentech, McKesson, and major law firms focused on the specific challenges of information governance and e-discovery in the cloud.

The consensus was that the cloud (private, hybrid, and public) is a complex environment with a host of legal issues including security, privacy, and e-discovery. Many companies have been operating private clouds for years and are just now starting to put a legal wrapper around it.

Technology startups have been the most successful at it since many were born in the cloud, aware of the challenges from the beginning, and designed their technology infrastructure with a legal framework from the ground up.  A good resource on this topic is the recently published NIST "Guidelines on Security and Privacy in Public Cloud Computing" (NIST SP 800-144) (the "Guidelines").

All agreed that sustainable information governance is the key to mitigating risk and reducing costs across the enterprise. To achieve information governance Nirvana will require strong corporate leadership and key stakeholders all working toward a common goal. Check out  InfoGov Community which is an information exchange on how to plan for and manage the accelerating impact of big data on the corporation. 

These type of events help assure participants that they are aligned in strategy and affirms the saying that misery loves company.  :)

Image by Clipart.com