Internal investigations software helps legal and HR teams quickly upload, process, and review data that could be relevant to their investigation. This process is similar to document review and production in litigation, leading many organizations to embrace eDiscovery software for their own investigations.
When an investigation is triggered, investigators can quickly collect data from their data sources or simply drag and drop it into their review platform. From there, data ingestion is automated. Documents undergo a series of processing steps, including OCR’ing, text extraction, deduplication, virus scanning, and metadata preservation, to prepare the data for review.
Once loaded, review can begin quickly. Bulk culling and auto-tagging reduce the need for eyes-on review. The more sophisticated the review platform’s search capabilities are, the better, allowing investigators to create intelligent, customized searches to quickly identify the “troubled children.”
Here’s how investigations software can help speed up your internal investigations:
Defensible Data Preservation
The right workplace investigation software can make your life easier even before the investigation actually begins. As soon as there’s reasonable anticipation that an investigation might occur, you can use Logikcull Hold to issue a legal hold notice to all relevant custodians and automatically preserve in place data from sources like Google Vault. Reminders and hold acknowledgement tracking is 100% automatic, and when the matter moves into a full-blown investigation, you can start ingesting and reviewing all relevant data in the same place. This allows you to keep a full picture of your investigation process.
Instant Data Collection
With the right technology in place, you can collect all relevant information from any custodian cloud-to-cloud and in just a few clicks. When your internal investigations software is integrated with your main data sources, such as Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Box, or Slack, you have a direct line with your company’s data, so you can move from collection to review in just a few minutes.
For any data that’s not stored in any traditional sources, you also need a platform that allows you to drag and drop any file type and start reviewing quickly.
Automatic Data Processing
When your information is loaded into a review platform like Logikcull, it goes through thousands of automated processing steps, such as document deduplication, OCRing to make files searchable, metadata extraction to collect valuable information, virus scanning, embedded file extraction, and more. That information can then be used to quickly filter your documents for review.
Streamlined Data Culling
Using metadata filters, you can hone in on the most relevant documents quickly. For example, you can use filters to narrow documents by file type, sender, recipient, date range, and more. If the subject of an investigation has been exfiltrating company information by emailing it to a personal account, for example, filters can help identify those actions in minutes.
Your software should also allow you to “cull”, or exclude, unimportant information. Duplicate documents can be instantly removed, while irrelevant files, spam, and the like can be set aside to avoid unnecessary review.
Smart Data Review
Add smart searching into the mix, and you can radically reduce the time needed to review documents. Internal investigation tools like Logikcull allow you to engineer powerful searches, whether you are looking for simple keywords or complex relationships between terms.
And, since intuitive design is one of the hallmarks of this internal investigations technology, you don’t need a degree in information sciences to construct powerful searches—the software makes complexity incredibly simple. In many cases, effective search and culling can eliminate the need to review up to 97 percent of a subject’s documents. This can dramatically bring down review time and costs.
Effortless Productions
Once your data culling and review is complete, you need to produce it in a format that’s appropriate for the recipients. Internal investigations software allows you to export your information in PDF or any other common production format, as well as share the link of your review project with anyone for instant collaboration.
Increased Security
Finally, cloud-based internal investigations software allows you to keep control over your most  sensitive data, even when working with outside experts. Rather than sending data to an outside vendor, you can upload, process, and get your data ready for review in a secure, encrypted environment. You can then invite outside experts, such as law firms or security consultants, to aid in review, without documents ever being reproduced or taken out of the company’s control.