Hi everyone
Does anyone have any advice on searching and extracting emails for SARs? Currently our IT team run the search which can return hundreds of pst files. We then manually open these one by one and pull out relevant emails, then have to manually convert these into pdf so we can review and redact. It takes absolutely ages and the amount of duplication us horrendous.
I have tried to speak to the IT team but no one is aware of a better way of doing this. I am wondering if there is any software or tips/tricks you use to make this process simpler.
Thank you!
Stephen Lark
I’ve never heard of SmartBox so checked them out. I’d be careful as parts of their website are still in Latin and their cookie ‘more info’ button takes you to a marketing companies page that drops more cookies. I’m sure they are a good company but it tells me they are resource stretched at present which may affect product development, response and support.
As the others have said – due diligence is key.
Finding emails is easy, redacting and preparing for submission to the requestor is not and sadly the cost of doing so in an automated fashion is very expensive.
I’m sure you have not but don’t forget your unstructured data too.
We do have a commercial arrangement with a company called Guardum which is top of the tree when it comes to DSAR’s. If you want to know more let me know.
Chris Roberts
I too have heard of Smartbox, but have never used them so as with BLueBottles response due diligence the watch word because so many solutions promise so much and under deliver!
BlueBottle
I spoke to a company recently who have a pay as you go SaaS product called Smartbox that can ingest .pst files, you can make a monthly commitment but at £100/GB/mo it seems pretty good compared to the £70k/yr I was quoted for another tool. I have no connection to the company and you should conduct your own due diligence.
In the demo they showed me, it had the ability to search/extract then redact-in-place non-destructively, and finally export to PDF(s). For your use case it sounds like that could be the right sort of thing.