Looking Back at Exterro XChange

Some collected thoughts a few days after a delightful week in New Orleans with apologies for the delay, as I took some (well-deserved) time off after the event...

Excitement Was High for FTK 8.0...

Sometimes the first day of XChange is relatively quiet, as attendees are focused on hands-on training and tucked away in breakout rooms. Well, this year the breakout rooms were packed, with attendees looking to learn skills in both Exterro's e-discovery and digital forensic platforms. A lot of the attention was focused on FTK 8.0 which brings a revolutionary new experience to digital forensics professionals.

After a really productive day of hands-on training for Exterro users on Tuesday, Exterro Xchange got kicked off with everyone gathered in one room for Wednesday morning’s keynote address, from Exterro CEO, President, and Founder, Bobby Balachandran; Chief Product Officer, Ajith Samuel; and Chief Operating Officer, Debora Jones. It was truly an exciting morning as the extended Exterro family of team members, partners, and most importantly, customers and users, gathered together for the first time since 2019.

Data Is at the Heart of Modern Organizations

Whether you think of it as oil, gold, water, or some other metaphor, data is modern organization's most valuable asset. It has intrinsic value just as data--think of the lengths hackers might go to steal personal data or the value it would retrieve on the dark web. What about the value intellectual property might hold to a competing business? 

But data also poses great risks. Data breaches, civil litigation, and privacy regulations all pose financial, reputational, and even existential threats to organizations, as well. To preserve the value--and to lessen the potential losses those risks could incur--organizations must take steps to understand, preserve, and protect the data they hold.

How Exterro Helps Organizations Manage Their Data

Exterro helps clients minimize risk posed by data and leverage the power of data to their advantage in four key areas.

• Optimizing the e-discovery process – ensuring our clients are able to get to the facts of every matter faster and defensibly at lower costs than any other competitor
• Understanding what data they have within their organization, how it’s used, who has access to it, what retention and legal obligations apply to it, ensuring privacy-related compliance activities are managed appropriately
• Orchestrating their cybersecurity response activities, from forensically determining the nature and method of intrusion, to managing the legally mandated reporting and notification process to quickly and easily identifying what sensitive data was impacted, including tying data to specific individuals within federally mandated timelines
• Powering digital forensic investigations for law enforcement, federal agencies and corporations

Holistic Strategies Are the Best Strategies

The days of piecemeal solutions to the legal department's data management challenges are long past. Legal departments have to understand what data the organization holds, why it has it, how it uses it, where it comes from, and where it goes--and they have to be able to report on these activities quickly--whether for litigation, privacy compliance, cybersecurity incident response, or any other use case. The only way to manage all these responsibilities efficiently is with a holistic platform designed to give legal departments visibility and access into the organization's data stores where they are. 

A Celebration of Community

In addition to the learning that went on at XChange, there's also a deep sense of community that it builds. With social gatherings every evening, attendees had the chance to connect with and learn from each other informally as well as formally. One of the highlights of the week was Wednesday night's Hero Awards dinner, where the four recipients of Hero Awards received recognition from the Exterro family for their amazing achievements in the realms of e-discovery, privacy, digital forensics, and legal GRC.

We had a great time at XChange 2023, and it's not too soon to start planning for XChange 2024, happening next September! We hope to see you there!