06 October 2025
James Griffin, CEO at CyberSentriq
Data is growing faster than most businesses can manage, and cloud productivity tools alone can’t keep up. When security, compliance, and retrieval are at stake, MSPs need more than great storage - they need control.
UK IT security regulators don’t care how your data is stored - just that it has protections in place and you can find it, fast. However, for MSPs and IT teams still fighting the good fight with on-premise storage and legacy backup systems, e-discovery is a ticking compliance time bomb.
Alongside this, UK data regulators are cracking down and handing out harsher penalties for data malpractices. To stay compliant, businesses need to be on top of all of their data assets, making them secure and reachable, on demand, at all times.
To meet modern compliance demands, MSPs need a single platform that can search, secure and scale without manual patchwork or blind spots. A unified e-discovery platform doesn’t just protect data, it makes ditching fragile, outdated storage systems simple and secure.
Compliance obligations
Staying compliant at scale is a major challenge for growing companies, especially as data volume, regulations, and complexity increase. When managing data across the IT estate, businesses need to be fully prepared well in advance of auditing and regulatory enquiries.
In the UK, businesses must be able to identify where all the electronic information they oversee comes from. Disclosure and inspection of documents is mandated under Part 31 of the Civil Procedure Rules, and regulations are being revisited frequently in Parliament. Full data compliance encompasses email, databases and other internal files - all of which are ever-changing.
Whether it is a customer exercising their fundamental right to personal data or legal officials enquiring about certain assets, the right information needs to be immediately accessible. However, for businesses with disparate and siloed on-premise storage, search difficulties occur, and the systems involved are incapable of tracking changes in content or location.
If such information is lost, financial damage in the form of fines, as well as reputational damage in the eyes of the customer involved, are risks that no business can afford.
Cloud-based e-discovery
e-discovery automates the vital process of locating and retrieving data, accelerating the demonstration of due diligence and decreasing the strain on staff. This capability remains flexible in line with evolving legislation, helping firms to stay proactive with their data management. But without a central location for data management that is accessible from any company device, legally enforced search and retrieval is bound to remain complex and costly.
Full control over data, identities and communications - along with the high costs that can otherwise come with e-discovery - can be ensured by centralising this capability in the cloud. Cloud infrastructure allows organisations to scale costs up and down, and only pay for the resources they need.
Specific assets can be instantly located across multiple storage environments, ensuring legal requests are met without delay. This is paramount in a business world where every piece of digital information almost certainly resides in more than one location.
Optimising backup and security
The ability to properly back up and secure all data at the organisation’s disposal, across cloud and on-prem environments, is also a key element of compliance that plays into any strong e-discovery tool. As data breaches must be reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), it makes sense to optimise authentication and security of sensitive information before regulatory queries arise.
For best results, the cloud-based e-discovery tool you implement should adhere to ISO 27001, ISO 9001, ISO 22301, SOC 2 Type 1 & 2, and (for healthcare-associated businesses) HIPAA standards. The cloud platform acquired needs to be fully tailored to the specific regulations that oversee the industry in which the MSP, enterprise or IT team operates.
Additionally, cloud-based e-discovery should be capable of keeping all data immutably backed up and scannable before recovery, to help avoid any corruption as a result of rising malware threats.
Tackling data growth with ease
The old, convoluted way of manually checking on data in each business department and reactively putting measures in place is prone to delays and no longer cuts it in a business world that demands fast-paced action. Moving e-discovery to the cloud would go a long way in facing evolving regulations and legal queries head-on.
Cloud-based e-discovery inherently scales to encompass masses of data coming into the company network as a result of internal and external communications, as well as administrative and project management. It doesn’t end with speeding up and streamlining search and retrieval; cloud infrastructure centralises and boosts data security, with access and privileges being customisable in line with the specific needs of the business.
By investing in e-discovery tools that work seamlessly across cloud environments, organisations can amply prepare for, and quickly satisfy, any customer or regulator challenge that comes their way.
But more than just a compliance safeguard, this investment becomes a strategic enabler, transforming how organisations manage risk, respond to incidents, and even make decisions.
Modern e-discovery platforms that integrate across cloud apps (like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Slack, and Zoom) not only ensure rapid access to data but also provide intelligence and context, surfacing patterns and behaviours that would otherwise stay buried in data sprawl.
Regulations are tightening. Customers expect control, and the cost of non-compliance is only going up. It’s time for MSPs to stop firefighting and start building a foundation for confident, compliant growth.
