Tag! Metadata Made Easy in Vista

chris.chalmers — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 03:47:00 GMT

Just in time for Halloween, a scary story about metadata! Who knows what awful, incriminating secrets lie hidden in your Word document's metadata, waiting to betray you? After all, isn't that why attorneys request "native format" document production? So they can revel in the smoking guns buried in your metadata that you never even knew you were transmitting?

It wasn't supposed to be this way. And in Vista, it isn't.

Metadata is supposed to help the user. And Vista makes it easier than ever to view and edit a document's metadata, search using metadata, and remove document metadata - all without having to launch the underlying application that created the file (like Word, Excel or PowerPoint).

It can also be part of a larger "Manage in Place" strategy for e-discovery. Step One is simply making the end users aware of the metadata they generate, and Step Two is giving them an easy tool to edit it. Just another little way to make it easy to categorize documents in-place, and reduce the amount of unnecessary, discoverable data lying around your network.

So how do I make it easy to view metadata in Vista's Windows Explorer?

First off, here's a quick overview of all the enhancements to Windows Explorer in Vista:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/explorers.aspx

We're primarily interested in the new "Details" pane at the bottom of the explorer. By right-clicking on the pane, you can choose to make your view Small, Medium, or Large. Here's a screenshot of the Details pane set to display "large" amounts of metadata.

(Thanks to the Windows Live Writer beta team, which made putting this screenshot into my blog incredibly simple).

As you can see, it's easy to view the metadata associated with any file simply by clicking on it - opening is not required. Also, if you use the expanded "Details" view in Explorer, you can have any metadata field displayed, not just size and last creation date.

Next: Searching your metadata

The Search panel is in the upper-right corner of the Explorer. Of course you can type in keywords like "short-sale" or phrases like "credit default swap." By default, these searches are applied to the full text of the documents you're searching. If you want to restrict your search to just the metadata fields, begin your query with the metadata field name. For example, these are valid metadata queries:

comments: review

author: chris

And these queries can be strung together. For example, if Chris ever used the phrase "approved" or "bury it" in the comments of a document that Dave authored about Contoso, it would look like this:

Contoso author:dave comments:(“needs review” OR "fix this")

Here's a complete description of the query language built into Windows Desktop Search (built into Vista, and a free download for Windows XP) http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/technicalresources/advquery.mspx

What about removing the metadata?

Ahh, the best feature of all. You can select one or several files in Windows Explorer, and right-click them and choose Properties…Details. From there you'll see the link to "Remove properties and personal information." Here's a screenshot

(Did you notice the "Last Printed" field? Interesting…) Note that you can remove all the metadata fields, or only some of them.

Here's more information about how bulk-remove metadata from a group of files:

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/06605e2a-3f56-488b-8415-702813f24c791033.mspx#EQB

Best of all, Windows will even prompt you to either overwrite the original file, or create a new metadata-free version of the file.

Hopefully this post has encouraged you to embrace, or at least consider, Vista's improved metadata handling features. Even the simplest usage of metadata can be superbly helpful. For example, I review lots of PowerPoint presentations in my line of work: Simply adding the word "good" to the Comments field of the ones I liked makes it much easier to find them later.

And if you're afraid the metadata bogeymen are out to get you, you can now banish them forever with a couple of mouse clicks. Happy Halloween!

Managing USB Thumb Drives - Is Vista Better Than Epoxy?

chris.chalmers — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 05:43:00 GMT

What's so bad about USB flash drives? Isn't it great that, for less than $50, I can buy device the size of my thumb that holds 16Gb of emails, product designs, and drafts of confidential memos? In a word, NO.

From an e-discovery perspective, tracking and managing all these potential sources of responsive information is a nightmare. Brad Carlson of Fios, Inc. outlines a helpful process in his article, "Collecting Personal Data for E-Discovery" in Computer Technology Review (you can read it here:

http://www.wwpi.com/fall-2007/2794-collecting-personal-data-for-e-discovery) .

But the sheer scope of the problem is overwhelming. Here at Microsoft, USB flash drives are a frequent promotional giveaway: I've seen flash drive key chains, flash drive Swiss army knives, flash drive flashlights, even a flash drive wristwatch. How can attorneys possibly have any confidence that they've identified all the sources of data they might use in their claim or defense?

I once knew a sys admin who was so concerned about the potential damage those tiny USB drives could cause his organization that he put epoxy into the USB ports of all new laptops that came into his organization!

Needless to say, there's a better way to manage USB devices in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

There's a new set of Group Policy Objects (GPOs) specifically for managing USB devices. If you're not familiar with Group Policy, here's a one sentence description: it lets administrators turn off certain features of Windows in a way that users can't turn them back on. You can learn more at the Group Policy center here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/grouppolicy/default.aspx

TechNet Magazine has an article that explains how to use Group Policy to control which USB devices (if any) can connect to the USB ports of Vista machines. The article was written from a security perspective, but it's easy to see how it applies to e-discovery. " Security: Managing Hardware Restrictions via Group Policy"

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc138012.aspx

The controls are quite granular. In a more in-depth article on MSDN, you can learn how to "authorize" USB connections down to the individual device manufacturer's make and model. The article is "Step by Step Guide to Controlling Device Installation Using Group Policy:"

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb530324.aspx

Here are some of the highlights:

Prevent users from installing any device.
Allow users to install only devices that are on an "approved" list. If a device is not on the list, then the user cannot install it.
Prevent users from installing devices that are on a "prohibited" list. If a device is not on the list, then the user can install it.
Deny read or write access to users for devices that are themselves removable, or that use removable media, such as CD and DVD burners, floppy disk drives, external hard drives, and portable devices such as media players, smart phones, or Pocket PC devices.

This gives administrators much more flexibility around using and deploying USB devices in a responsible manner. For instance, you could provide your users with a large "authorized" USB drive that they can use for their local backups. Meanwhile, all other USB drives won't be able to connect to the computer, because of your policy. It's the best of both worlds: you don't have to worry about all those USB thumb drives scattered about, and end users can still enjoy some of the benefits of USB.

No epoxy required!

E-Discovery and Microsoft Technology : Windows Vista

Tag! Metadata Made Easy in Vista

So how do I make it easy to view metadata in Vista's Windows Explorer?

Next: Searching your metadata

What about removing the metadata?

Managing USB Thumb Drives - Is Vista Better Than Epoxy?