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inter in the northeast United States had persisted like a throbbing headache that stubbornly refused to
respond to any remedy. Finally and rapidly, though, it seemed that Spring was asserting itself.
Temperatures were climbing, trees were blossoming and birds were chirping. Just seeing more
sunshine was a relief and improved everyone's mood.
Even Gensui Acme Imaging's newly promoted Manager of Messaging Systems, Valerie Wright, was in a good
mood. The view of a magnolia tree in full glory outside the window of her boss's office was cheery enough to
keep Valerie seated in the vacant room. Peter Terrell, also newly appointed as Vice President of Technology and
still Valerie's supervisor, was once again making her wait for their weekly meeting.
Her promotion, just three weeks old, had come as a complete surprise to Valerie. She had been so “heads
down” with the work of merging the messaging systems of two companies that she just did not see it coming.
She smiled now as she remembered how happy Peter had looked when he told her. It would have taken an act
of Congress to remove his huge grin.
Naturally, Valerie was busier than ever, both her and Peter. Besides everything else related to Gensui Imaging's
merger with Acme Co., the two of them were looking to fill two new IBM Domino Administrator positions.
Eventually, this would free up more of Valerie's time but right now, the process of collecting, reviewing and
prioritizing resumes, added on top of every other urgent project, was overwhelming.
As the reality of her workload began to sober her mood, Peter flew into the office. “I'm so sorry, Val.” Peter
apologized as soon as he saw her. “These meetings upon meetings! How will we get anything done?” He
dumped an armful of stuffed file folders and his black leather folio onto his desk as he flopped into his chair.
He took a deep breath, held it for a second, let it out all at once, and said, “So, how are you?” Each smiled at the
other. They knew that the answer was the same for both of them: overwhelmed.
“What do we have today, Val? The Mail Merge?” asked Peter, using the nickname they had come up with for the
Microsoft Exchange to IBM Domino email migration project.
“No.”
“Oh. What, then?”
“Simply put, our data retention is a train wreck,” Valerie said.
“Really?” Peter's curiosity seemed genuine. “How so?”
“Well, let me tell you how I got thinking about this.”
“Okay.”
“Last week, I was working on someone's laptop and I noticed a large Notes database on his hard drive. The file
name made me think it was related to their mail file. When I opened it, I saw messages going back several
years.”
“Wow. How big was the file?”
“Nearly five gig. Which turned out to be part of the reason he was running out of disk space.”
“We allow local replicas of mail. How did his get so big, though?”
“It wasn't a replica,” Valerie answered. “I asked him about it and he said it was his mail backup.”
“His mail backup?”
“W
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“Yes. It seems that he figured out how to create a local mail file and he routinely copies important messages to
it.” Valerie made an air quotes gesture with her fingers as she said “important.”
“I see. So, we're running out of disk space because of this?” Peter guessed.
“Maybe,” answered Valerie. “But that isn't what's worrying me.”
“Okay. What's worrying you?” Peter asked, trying to follow Valerie's breadcrumb trail.
“For starters, how many of these mail backups are there out there?” The air quotes showed up again, around
“backups” this time.
“Right.”
It seemed that light had not gone on yet inside Peter's head, so she pressed. “Okay. It's easy to make a local
Notes database and copy messages into it. It's easy to copy office docs locally. All that data is out there, living
outside our data retention controls. What if those laptops get subpoenaed?” Valerie paused, then summarized,
“We're at risk.”
Peter's expression revealed that the light was finally coming on.
“We're at risk,” Valerie repeated, “and we don't even know what we don't know.”
“I'm with you, now, Val.” Peter said. “So, we need to lock down or manage the data on these laptops, somehow.”
“Maybe. I don't know what we need to do because I don't know how big the problem is. We need to get more
data about... the data. If that makes sense.”
“It does. I get it, now. And I can see why you're worried,” Peter said. “I am too.”
“Good,” Valerie said then added quickly, “I mean, I'm glad it isn't just me being overly paranoid.”
Peter's brain seemed to be in high gear now while evaluating the new information.
Valerie continued. “I made a list of areas where I think we are vulnerable.” She passed a printout to her boss.
Peter scanned the list:
Servers
Domino
• Mail (w/ Attachments)
• Mail-in Applications (w/ Attachments)
• Other Applications (e.g., discussion, team room, custom, etc.) (w/
Attachments)
File Shares
• Loose documents
Local machines
Loose documents
Notes Data
• Mail (replicas, copies, archives) - incl. exported messages
• Other Notes databases (copies/replicas)
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“So... everything?” he asked.
“Pretty much,” Valerie agreed.
“Does this story have any good news?”
Valerie smiled, “Well, now that you mention it...”
“Go on.”
“I checked with Sherpa Software and it turns out that their Discovery Attender product can do a Risk
Assessment. They say it's part of...” she read from her notepad, “the Identification stage of the Electronic
Discovery Reference Model.” Looking back up, she continued, “Anyway, it can scan all these areas and report
back on exactly what's out there: mail, attachments, loose files, where they are, how many, how big... all that.”
“Sounds perfect,” Peter cheered up at hearing there was a solution and not just another problem.
Before he could ask, Valerie concluded, “I'll get you a price.” She rose and was already leaving. “Then, I'm going
to have lunch outside, since it is so nice today.” She glanced back to see Peter smiling as she turned into the
hallway and thought to herself, Another issue resolved.
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About the Author
As the Product Manager for Compliance Attender for Notes, Grant is responsible for product
research and development, pre-sales technical support (e.g., Demos), post-sales technical
support and competitive research.
Grant joined Sherpa Software in 2007 and has 17 years of experience in Information
Technology. Of those, more than 16 were spent building applications with Lotus Notes and
Domino. He worked with a wide range of company sizes and across several industries
including insurance, consulting, venture capital, manufacturing, software and more.
Grant is an IBM Certified Advanced Application Developer and an expert in email management and compliance,
LotusScript, Notes Formula Language, application design and security. He is also skilled in C/C++ and Java
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for Notes and Domino. Grant is accomplished in web delivered
technologies: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
He graduated in 1995 from the Career Development Institute with a Programmer Analyst Diploma. Grant spends
his off time with his wife, Lydia, of 19 years and their three retired greyhound racers, Rio, Wavorly and Oriole.