Document Retention Policy and Litigation Hold Notice

Purpose

The purpose of this project is to provide you with an opportunity to create a document retention policy. You will also learn how to serve a litigation hold notice for an educational institute. The following aspects of litigation and document retention are covered:

• Applicability of confidentiality, integrity, and availability (C-I-A) concepts
• Confidentiality of personal information and contracts
• Applicability of the American legal system in the litigation process involving corporate, public, and private institutions
• Intellectual property (IP) issues
• Risk analysis and incident response procedures
• Forensics examination

Required Source Information and Tools

The following tools and resources will be needed to complete this project:

• Course textbook
• Access to the Internet
• Project Litigation Hold Notice handout (legal_ts_projectlitigationholdnotice)
• Project Appendix A handout (legal_ts_projectappendixa)

Learning Objectives and Outcomes

You will gain an understanding of the aspects involved in the conception, enforcement, and implementation of security policies. You will also gain insight to risk analysis and will learn how to respond to any given situation that might arise from a violation of those security policies.

Deliverables

Scenario

You are member of the IT Staff for Premier College. Recently, your college has received a notice from the Department of Education about an investigation of your college based on the state-specific testing and compliance procedures. The Department of Education has sent a Litigation Hold Notice wherein they have asked all college staff and administrators of the college to preserve all relevant documents, records, data, contracts (regardless of its location or medium), and correspondence notes.

To understand the litigation hold notice received from the Department of Education, refer to the documents entitled “Project Litigation Hold Notice“ (legal_ts_projectlitigationholdnotice) and “Project Appendix A” (legal_ts_projectappendixa). As a reminder, this Litigation Hold preservation obligation supersedes any existing statutory or regulatory document retention period or destructive schedule. The determination of what information may be potentially relevant is based upon content and substance and generally does not depend on the type of medium in which the information exists.

The information requested may exist in various forms, including paper records, handwritten notes, telephone log entries, e-mail, and other electronic communications (including voicemail), word processing documents (including drafts, spreadsheets, databases, and calendars), telephone logs, electronic address books, smartphones, Internet usage files, systems manuals, and network access information in their original format.

All electronically stored information (ESI) should be preserved in its originally created, or “native” format, along with related metadata. Relevant backup tapes and all indexes for those tapes should also be preserved. Reasonably accessible information must also be preserved, because such sources will need to be identified under compelling circumstances, and may need to be produced. If you have any doubts as to whether specific information is responsive, err on the side of preserving that information.

Tasks

After receiving the Litigation Hold Notice, your next task is to do the following:

1. Create a document retention policy for your College that complies with all state and Federal regulations.
2. Create a Litigation Hold Notice similar to the one provided to you in the Project Litigation Hold Notice handout.
3. Create a checklist of procedures that must be followed in order to comply with the Litigation Hold Notice.
4. Prepare a summary of all your findings.

Submission Requirements

Submit your answer in a Microsoft Word document in a minimum of 5 pages, along with a cover page and executive summary.

• Font: Arial 10-point size
• Line Spacing: Double
• Citation Style: Follow your school’s preferred style guide

Evaluation Criteria and Rubrics

Instructor will evaluate the student project based on a comparison with the provided Project Litigation Hold Notice handout.