Agent Paradigm eDiscovery Paradigm

Agent Paradigm
Many companies use agent centric discovery. In the agent centric paradigm, a corporation must deploy and install a small application on each and every device it wishes to perform discover upon. The advantage of agent centric discovery is that the discovery effort leverages the source compute engine (CPU) to conduct search. Agent search also solves the challenge in discovering Live and Locked Files since runs in the client and has root access. The downside to agent centric approach is that corporations have to know each and every device on their network before discovery begins. The deployment and installation of the discovery agent must occur on every device. A corporation with thousands of desktops, laptops, servers and file servers will need significant planning to deploy the agent, not including test time of the agent on critical operational systems to ensure compatibility. Since corporations can only collect data from known sources, the agent approach exposes the corporation to omission liability, if relevant litigation materials are found on an unknown source. Another challenge with agent centric discovery is user intervention. Agents are often disabled by users because they slow system performance, which further impedes information discovery and collection.


Agent Benefits
• Distributes Compute Load
• Searches Lock and Live Files

Agent Challenges
• Search only know sources
• Agent compatibility challenges
• Agent application termination by users
• Agent deployment and installation on all information sources