The new Microsoft Purview eDiscovery portal with sun kissed defensible production logs.

As summer vacations end and eDiscovery project teams return to the office to pick up deferred legal matters, a new experience awaits those using Microsoft Purview eDiscovery to collect and prepare digital evidence for litigation.

Over the Summer months both Microsoft and Byzgen have delivered improvements to support the EDRM process and build defensible eDiscovery cases within Microsoft Purview eDiscovery.

New Microsoft Purview eDiscovery portal

Let us first look at the new Microsoft Purview eDiscovery portal, released in public preview in August 2024, that offers a significant upgrade to the existing eDiscovery capabilities within Microsoft 365.

The upgrade demonstrates Microsoft’s focus and commitment to ensuring organisations can process legal requests within Microsoft 365 without having to export data to external review platforms that increase security and compliance risks.

Designed to streamline the eDiscovery process and enhance user experience, this updated portal incorporates a range of enhancements:

Unified Interface

• Consolidated workspace: A single, centralized location for managing eDiscovery cases, reviewing data, and applying search filters.
• Intuitive navigation: Simplified navigation and a more user-friendly interface to reduce learning curve.

Enhanced Search Capabilities

• Advanced search options: More powerful search capabilities, including keyword search, Boolean operators, proximity search, and wildcard characters.
• Faceting: The ability to filter search results based on metadata attributes like sender, recipient, date, and content type.
• Predictive search: Suggested terms to help refine your search queries.

Improved Analytics

• Visualizations: Graphs, charts, and other visualizations to help you understand your data and identify trends.
• Reporting: Customizable reports to track eDiscovery activities and metrics.
• Analytics integration: Deeper integration with Microsoft Power BI for advanced data analysis.

Simplified Case Management

• Streamlined workflows: Simplified workflows for creating, managing, and closing cases.
• Automation: Automated tasks to reduce manual effort and improve efficiency.
• Case templates: Pre-defined templates to accelerate case creation.

Integration with Microsoft 365 Services

• Deeper integration: Enhanced integration with Teams, SharePoint, and other Microsoft 365 services.
• Seamless workflows: Simplified workflows for collecting data from various sources.

Additional Features

• Customizable review sets: Create custom review sets to organize and prioritize data.
• Batch actions: Perform actions on multiple documents simultaneously.
• Export options: Export data in various formats for review, production, or legal purposes.

There is no doubt that the new Microsoft Purview eDiscovery portal provides a more efficient, intuitive, and powerful eDiscovery experience helping organizations streamline their eDiscovery processes and reduce the time and cost associated with legal investigations.

What about the eDiscovery production logs?

So, “how about the eDiscovery production logs? Did they get the upgrade experience? Is it now possible to store defensible and immutable eDiscovery logs?

Great news, the answer is “YES!”

LogLocker for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Audit

In August, Byzgen released LogLocker for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Audit that is available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace and provides a 30-day free trial. The application supports both Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Standard and Premium licencing so its accessible to all Microsoft Purview eDiscovery users.

LogLocker for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Audit is a defensible log storage solution for eDiscovery teams looking to enhance Purview eDiscovery audit and production logs.

The LogLocker application provides eDiscovery teams a defensible set of production logs detailing all actions and events being conducted within Purview eDiscovery. To achieve true defensibility, Microsoft Sentinel collects the eDiscovery logs and LogLocker stores them on the private blockchain architecture.

How LogLocker enhances Microsoft Purview eDiscovery

LogLocker is an Azure app integrated into the native features of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender, and Log Analytics so your logs can be filtered, collected, and archived.

Built on blockchain technology, LogLocker gives you superior redundancy, preservation, security, and data lineage capabilities. This guarantees tamper-proof, immutable, and defensible production logs.

Microsoft Power BI templates are provided as part of the solution to allow users to report and present eDiscovery event data directly from the private blockchain internally or to external third parties.

Why should I download a trial of LogLocker for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Audit?

• Reduced legal costs. Defensible logs offering transparency via secure sharing to reduce legal challenges and prolonged litigation.
• Lower archiving costs. Dramatically reduce your long-term log archiving costs.
• Less complexity. Simplify your storage and preservation of high-value compliance logs.
• Less data. Reduce your data volumes thanks to highly configurable log collection.
• Instant search. Use powerful search features to find your logs immediately.
• Flexible and agnostic. Accommodates all your custom log tables, data types, and retention periods.
• Dashboards and reporting. Use our Power BI templates to build your dashboards and reports to support the management and control of eDiscovery cases.

Summarising, it has been a very productive summer for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery, and it is great that eDiscovery teams can return to work supported by a significantly improved user experience. Better still, the need to export eDiscovery case data to external review platforms is minimised improving data security, compliance, and data integrity.

Do not delay getting your evenings and weekends back. Feel that summer vacation again! Get the new Microsoft Purview eDiscovery portal and add LogLocker for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Audit from the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.