Using Google Vault, we protected our client from a £250K legal liability.

Utilising Google Vault, we protected our client from a quarter of a million-pound legal liability by detecting an intentionally manipulated email.

Last week we got a thankful message from a Director of one of our Clients. We'd saved them £250K in legal liability for our ability to detect and identify an official email that had been manipulated, to change a date. 

Our client works in a highly regulated industry, they sign some massive and complex contracts. It is vital they have a retention and e-discovery system that can monitor and keep certified copies of all data that comes in and out of the organisation from emails, to documents, to calendar appointments and more.

Preserving your data

Google Vault is the service that provides these functions and is part of the G Suite productivity suite. Unlike other e-discovery solutions, there is no extra hardware to install; it is entirely web-based and part of your G Suite by Kimbley IT subscription. 

Vault allows organisations to retain, hold, search and export data. With Vault, the system can be told how long G Suite should keep data, which is perfect for regulatory requirements. Legal holds can be put in place to preserve any data needed to satisfy a judicial investigation. 

In the case of our client, they received a copy of an email from a business, containing an email that our client had sent them. This email included an essential date in it, at which point a contract would get breached, and liability of £250K would be due. 

The employee (at our client) who had sent the original email was convinced the date had been manipulated. A quick look in the sent items folder confirmed that the date on the email was indeed different from the email that appeared in their sent items. However, we needed to be able to confirm this change so it would stand legal scrutiny. This is where Google Vault came into play. 

A properly configured Google Vault enabled us to find the original email sent by the employee, in a matter of minutes. We could then confirm the company looking to get £250K had manipulated the date.

With Google Vault, we could hold, and export all the data linked to this matter. Along with secondary data that proved the information contained in Vault and that we exported is the original, and likewise had not been manipulated. 

Once the company was provided with this information by our client, they immediately ceased all action.

Protecting your business

Google Vault is a service overlooked by the majority of small businesses using G Suite. Usually, because they have self-deployed and are unaware of its existence, or find the configuration complex. Companies that have an IT support partner also tend to miss Google Vault. In most cases, their IT partner is not authorised by Google and likewise they are unaware of the service and have not received training in the correct use of the Vault.

Increasingly litigation is all about the documents you have and the documents you don't have. So a good record-keeping system and an good way to archive those records allows you to be sure of you've got and sure of what you don't have.

Next Step

If you feel you don't have a good grasp on the data in your business use the form below to book a video call with Kimbley IT.