Create a legal hold matter

Overview

To put backup data on legal hold, create a matter, apply a preservation policy, and add custodians. This article describes how to create and manage a matter.

Legal hold is a part of the eDiscovery process undertaken in response to actual or prospective litigation. For information on how to leverage CrashPlan Enterprise for eDiscovery, see our eDiscovery Integration Guide.

Considerations

• You can only place active users in a legal hold. If you want to place a deactivated user in a legal hold and retain their data, first reactivate the user. 
• In most CrashPlan environments, placing a user (called a custodian) on legal hold creates a new backup set on devices that belong to that user. Placing a user on legal hold changes their backup selection, so they might notice more files and folders selected for backup. The backup set associated with a legal hold is not visible to the end user, but the files backed up by the legal hold are available for user restores.

  For any destination starting with CrashPlan Destination, placing a user on legal hold creates a new backup set, but that legal hold backup set and any files it contains is not visible or available to the end user. In these destinations, users on legal holds see only their own backup sets (and the files those sets contain) and do not see any additional files that may be included in a legal hold backup set.

• All devices for a user on a legal hold will back up to all destinations available to the user, even destinations that are not selected for backup. As a result, the user may notice an increase in bandwidth usage or delays in the progress of non-legal hold backup sets.
• A user on a legal hold cannot upgrade his or her archive security level.
• A user on a legal hold cannot delete an archive.
• A custodian's files cannot be collected if the user meets one or both of the following conditions:
  • Is in an organization that has Compliance Settings activated
  • Has upgraded encryption key security 

• If users who are custodians under a legal hold are subsequently selected for deactivation (for example, from the CrashPlan console, a provisioning provider, or API), they are not deactivated immediately because their data must be retained for legal hold purposes. Instead, they are blocked. Once these blocked users are released from legal hold, they are deactivated automatically.

Before you begin

• Create a preservation policy to apply to your matter.
• The steps in this tutorial require one of the following roles:
  • Org Legal Admin
  • Cross Org Legal Admin

Step 1: Create a matter

1. Sign in to the CrashPlan console.
2. Select Legal Hold > Matters.
3. Select the Create Matter icon (+) from All Matters.
4. Enter the matter's name.
5. Choose a preservation policy to apply to your matter.
6. Click Create.
   The matter is created and appears in the list of matters.

Step 2: Edit matter details (optional)

1. From the list of all matters, click on the name of the matter.
2. To create a description, click Edit in the Description section.
3. Add a description.
4. To change the preservation policy, click Edit in the Preservation Policy section.
5. Choose a new policy for the matter.
6. To add an external reference, click Edit in the External Reference section.
7. Enter an external reference or notes.

Step 3: Add custodians

1. Click the Custodians tab.
2. Click the Add custodians (+) icon.
   The Add Custodians dialog appears.
3. Start entering the username or the user ID of the user you want to add.
   Matching usernames display as possible choices. Only active usernames are shown; deactivated users can not be added as custodians of a legal matter. To add a deactivated user to a legal matter, first reactivate that user.
4. Select the user you want to add.
5. (Optional) Add additional users if necessary.
   
   
6. Click Add to save your selection.
   The selected custodians appear in the list of custodians on the Custodians page.

Release or reactivate custodians