Kroll Ontrack opens French data centre

Kroll Ontrack has provided data recovery and electronic evidence services in France since 1998. It has invested in the new data centre in response to the growing number of international investigations and other legal matters faced by companies in France that require electronic evidence to be analysed locally.

Companies in France face an increased risk of litigation due to cross-border litigation and international arbitration. Global investigations often led by U.S. authorities, including those brought under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury are also on the rise, and expose them to increased legal risk. In Europe, increasing co-operation between regulators enforcing anti-trust law across multiple countries adds to that risk, as does aggressive enforcement by French competition authorities.

While French companies are obliged to respond to requests for data during these cases, strict local laws governing Data Protection mean they are reluctant to send information to other countries for processing and hosting in document review databases. In line with guidance from the French data protection authority, French companies prefer to filter their data in France before producing it to Courts or authorities in other countries. With the launch of Kroll Ontrack’s new data centre, French organisations will have access within their own borders to local experts and leading technology to help them identify and produce electronic evidence.

The need to carry out internal compliance audits is also increasing and companies are making use of ediscovery platforms proactively to search across their data and check for any sign of corporate wrongdoing.

“Our new French data center helps French companies address three key challenges: the increase in international and domestic investigations; the growing volumes of data they need to search through; and the need to comply with increasingly stringent Data Protection legislation,” said Tim Phillips, Managing Director, Kroll Ontrack International Legal Technologies. “Although there are no formal ediscovery rules in France, as there are in the U.S. and U.K, we are seeing a growing number of international matters that require organisations to analyse and produce electronic evidence quickly. It is important to our French clients to be able to process and host data required in legal proceedings within their own country, not just because of Data Protection laws, but because time is of the essence when responding to requests for information.”

“There have been several high profile cases over the past year involving investigations into the French operations of international companies by regulators with record fines being issued, and this has only served to highlight the need for local expertise and data processing services,” added Phillips “On top of that, we can see further regulation coming down the line, such as the new European Data Protection Regulation and the bill of law currently under review by the French Parliament, which aims to protect French companies’ trade secrets. As data protection and business secrecy laws tighten up in France it’s important to give French companies a local ediscovery data centre so that they have more control over their data and can investigate the misappropriation of confidential data.”

The new data centre in Paris offers not only extensive security, but also operational excellence for mission-critical applications such as ediscovery. Through this new data centre, companies and law firms in Europe can access Kroll Ontrack’s ediscovery technology in France, including data processing and filtering technology and a document review tool that can be used at all stages of a case with intelligent technology built in to control data volumes and cost.