On the Mark

I know my co-worker Lawrence Lee is going to crank on me for this one but here goes:

I’m a forever DOS and Windows guy since the beginning. Since before the Internet had GUI’s. Dos 3, Dos 5, I even ran Windows 3.1 on a 286 with 4 megs of RAM. Impossible, they said. I did it. Windows 95 was painful, 98 was a tad better. XP has been a mixed blessing and Vista…well, I’m not sure I’m going there.

Seriously. I have a tablet laptop which I won in a drawing a few years ago and its main duty has been to get my wife on the Internet and let her access email. She’s searching and shopping and stuff like that. But lately the laptop had grown to be sluggish and slow. Her brother has a Vista machine and boy those graphics are nice. But it’s too big a hog to go on this old tablet of mine.

I’m frustrated that Microsoft has made my hardware obsolescent with their newest operating system. So I was faced with a decision.

And what did I do?

Ubuntu.

God bless you.

I didn’t sneeze, I said “Ubuntu!”

Huh? Come again?

That’s right. I went completely off the reservation and wiped that laptop clean, right down to the bios.

I installed Ubuntu 7.10, the Linux based operating system that is FREE and stable.

That’s right. A Linux operating system.

Whoa, the Windows crowd gasps. Now THAT was uncalled for.

I have to get on the road this morning but I’m quite sure Ubuntu will work its way into this blog again very soon.

Anyone else here Ubuntu?

Yesterday morning was just beautiful.

I awoke to the warm breezes of Orlando, Florida and a dull ache in my back from holding a 29-pound vibrating child waiting to meet the King. No, not Elvis. He’s dead. (ask me about my sister Laura’s Elvis story sometime).

I’m talking about the real King…Mickey Mouse.

This morning, not so beautiful.

I awoke to the frigid cold and a snowstorm pounding New York, and now have an aching back from shoveling and pushing my snow blower up and down the sidewalks of my house and my neighbors’. It hasn’t let up yet and I’ve two rounds of snow-blowing, two rounds of sprinkling rock salt, or whatever it is, AND one snowman under my belt.

Yikes, this storm may be a big one.

Anyway, apparently my back isn’t the only thing that cold has a bad effect on. All this time we’ve fancied ourselves as super-smart in using encryption to stop unwelcome eyes from seeing our important data. Without encryption, things could be very scary for so many e-scenarios, it’s mind-boggling.

In his New York Times article today, John Markoff writes about The Center for Information and Technology Policy, Princeton University’s recent work in demonstrating how cold temperatures affect data and encryption efforts. This is really great stuff.

Edward W. Felten, one of nine individuals who performed the study, discusses it on his Freedom to Tinker blog. Both sites are great reading for folks like us (geek wannabees) and a must read for the real thing.

Ed blogs, “The root of the problem lies in an unexpected property of today’s DRAM memories. DRAMs are the main memory chips used to store data while the system is running. Virtually everybody, including experts, will tell you that DRAM contents are lost when you turn off the power. But this isn’t so. Our research shows that data in DRAM actually fades out gradually over a period of seconds to minutes, enabling an attacker to read the full contents of memory by cutting power and then rebooting into a malicious operating system.”

I’m not going to get into the e-discovery preservation aspects of this; it seems way beyond “reasonable,” to say the least. But it’s interesting that the so-called experts are wrong, and have been wrong for some time. It may interest you, too.

So, how do we really secure the data now that we know of this issue? Do programmers write to wipe DRAM before a device powers down?

Here’s a scenario: User accesses encrypted data on a server from remote. A large part of that data will live for a short period of time in the DRAM of the laptop or desktop computer used from remote session. I see potential security issues popping up on this one.

Ed blogs further, “. . . if you cool the DRAM chips, for example by spraying inverted cans of “canned air” dusting spray on them, the chips will retain their contents for much longer. At these temperatures (around -50 °C) you can remove the chips from the computer and let them sit on the table for ten minutes or more, without appreciable loss of data. Cool the chips in liquid nitrogen (-196 °C) and they hold their state for hours at least, without any power. Just put the chips back into a machine and you can read out their contents.”

I’m going to close this entry now and reach out to one of our experts over at Seagate Recovery Services for his insight. We’ll pick this up on Monday.

Have a great weekend everybody  — and stay warm.

On the Mark

And that “E” in E-Team already stood for excellence.

AlixPartners was very strong under the leadership of Matt Cohen, ex-Skadden litigator and industry eDiscovery expert, but now they’re even stronger.

Tom brings an amazing amount of experience from his time as a litigator for such firms as Rogers and Wells (now Clifford Chance), Wilson Sonsini and most recently as special counsel of eDiscovery at Sullivan & Cromwell, here in New York.  The department Tom built  at S&C is impressive.

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Tom for many many years, and I believe that with his addition, AlixPartners now have perhaps the best pure eDiscovery advisory tandem in the game today.

Tom has a rich background in eDiscovery and has served as General Counsel for both EED and SPI in the litigation technology industry. He’s also a killer saxophone player (pro-level, Toots and The Maytalls)  You read that here first.

Both Matt and Tom are fellow Sedona-mates and Georgetown Law CLE colleagues. They are also two of the kindest and most ethical gentlemen in our field. I am proud to be associated with them by way of those two organizations.

Congratulations to Matt Cohen on a great addition to his team and congratulations to Tom Barnett for a job well done at Sullivan & Cromwell and a great ride ahead.

 On the Mark 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, better known as the “EFF,” has uncovered evidence the FBI received a significant volume of email it was not authorized to receive.

Before you assume something sinister, it appears the email was received because of a technical glitch. Eric Lichtblau in his New York Times article takes the reader through a landscape of how technical tools are evolving — and how they don’t always work the way we hope or expect. 

The EFF for nearly 20 years has been the public’s champion with respect to digital rights and the electronic domain. It has been very effective, and has shaped the legal landscape on digital rights in many cases. 

On the Mark

We’ve made it through to another Friday and the prospect of a long holiday weekend.

I hope you, too, survived Valentine’s Day without any problems. If you followed my advice, you should be starting your day basking in the glow of a job well done. If not, you probably woke up with a sore back, courtesy of the pull-out sofa last night.

We’ll have a lighter blog schedule next week while I take my now almost-six-months pregnant wife and our two-year-old daughter to Orlando for a few days of rest and relaxation.  In reality, it will probably be four days of logistics, planes, rental cars, my Blackberry, wife’s Blackberry, driving, Disney, Cocoa Beach, more driving and hopefully a little fun and food. Wish me luck, patience and good weather. It’s my first Disney experience, ever.  

Upcoming Event

IQPC’s “EDiscovery for Financial Services Industry” seminar will take place  February 27-29 at the Millenium Broadway.

For those interested in “Complying with Information Retention Regulations and Improving Your Internal eDiscovery Process,” IQPC will serve up two full days of discussion panels on myriad topics, helping to bring sanity, and take-aways, attendees.

I’ll be speaking on two discussion panels that should be pretty interesting.  The first is “Building a Cross-Functional EDiscovery Team: Legal/Compliance, IS/IT, Business and Records Management.”  We’ll have some top-flight speakers:  Allison Brecher, Lauren Barnes, Eric Yeich (and myself moderating). I’m in good company with those three aces, who hail from major orgs like Marsh and McLennan, Lehman Bros. and Mercer.

The other panel, “Reducing Risk and Controlling Costs Through a Defensible In-House EDiscovery Processes,” is a topic near and dear to my heart. Besides me, the panel also includes John Rosenthal,  Patrick Burke, John M. Hodgens, Jr. and Dave Boyhan. 

We will supply more details on the event next week.

Have a good weekend.

On the Mark