A recent survey of UK General Counsel conducted with Legal Week Intelligence has proved that the majority of corporates are not yet in a position to answer basic questions about their data such as, where is it? What format is it in? Who is responsible for it at board level? Furthermore, Corporate Counsel would not be able to provide this data as electronic evidence if required to do so by a regulator.

Some of the key findings include:

• A staggering minority of companies know where their corporate data is held (only 29%)
• There is a naivety on the Board that management of electronic data will be dealt with properly and efficiently
• It is assumed by many companies that they can conduct their own investigations whilst regulators consider that companies cannot conduct their own investigation

Knowing what to do when a regulator comes knocking and preparing the information as electronic evidence is both a timely and costly matter. It is also an increasingly complicated task in these data driven and highly regulated times.

The need for corporates to understand the scope of any exercise relating to their data, to implement and manage appropriate resources and procedures as well as deliver the end product to the regulator whilst completing in highly compressed timescales is not something the majority are not prepared for.

To find out more download our Information Risk Benchmarker survey (PDF, 1979kb).

Related information
Press release: UK companies ill-prepared for electronic data requests