A Message from Our CEO

KLD COVID-19 Response

Dear KLD Clients, 

In light of the mounting concerns presented by the CoVID-19 pandemic, I am providing additional information about how KLD is responding to this evolving global crisis.

The situation we are facing right now, not only as a company, but as a global community, is unprecedented in our lifetimes. KLD's senior leadership team, with the full support of our Board of Directors, are in constant communication and making all decisions with three critical objectives in mind:

• Safeguarding the health & well-being of our employees, clients, and families;
• Maintaining continuity of operations; and
• Continuing to assess and augment our security posture

We are committed to preserving the health of our employees and clients and have proactively addressed these risks and concerns over the last few weeks. Virtually all of our full-time employees are working from home and, while there are certain tasks that require in-office support, we have taken steps to ensure the safety of the very small number of employees who are coming in to our offices. These include (but are not limited to) establishing duty rotations to minimise the risk of exposure, work environments that put at least 6 feet of distance between employees, regularly cleaning & sanitising work areas, and providing gloves or other safety materials as needed. We are accommodating flexible work schedules and providing additional coverage and support wherever needed, knowing most employees are facing unique personal situations as it relates to caring for children or other family members.

Our clients' needs are frequently supported by KLD's global network, so employing a "follow the sun" approach is second nature to many of our teams (which are already globally integrated). KLD has an excellent Internet infrastructure across our entire geographic footprint of twenty countries, with a secure VPN with mandatory dual-factor authentication, and global workforce policies that encourage flexibility to work remotely. Every country we conduct business in has strong fiber for internet bandwidth, so we are in excellent shape with respect to connectivity.

We are also using every tool at our disposal to keep our teammates connected and morale high. We extensively use collaboration tools for chatting, video calls, and file sharing. I am posting a video each workday to our intranet and using it as a platform to remain visible to our global workforce, update our employees on important news with our company, sharing positive client feedback, and recognising employees for going out of their way to help each other. We have encouraged employees to take pictures of themselves working from home, which we also share on our intranet, so we can all see each other in our distinct work environments. It has been amazing to see everyone's "unique fingerprint"!

While the majority of KLD’s full time employees have historically been able to work remotely, we also employ a large number of temporary contract employees for our document review business. Up until recently, KLD has always conducted document review on-site at one of our global facilities. In response to the CoVID-19 threat and in agreement with our clients, we have successfully executed a plan which allows our document reviewers to securely connect to our systems and continue working from home. Over the past two weeks, we have transitioned all existing projects to this new remote model, allowing this service to operate continuously and seamlessly in a manner that keeps our employees best interests front and centre. We currently have hundreds of reviewers working remotely around the world.

Collecting data is a critical service without which our clients' other discovery efforts are paralysed. Given the disruption presented by CoVID-19 to travel and human interaction, it is important that we be able to remotely collect as much data as possible. To that end, KLDiscovery offers a proprietary, self-collection platform called Remote Collection Manager ("RCMgr™"). RCMgr uses an external hard drive to collect pre-defined data (to include laptop/desktop imaging, server/network shares and MAC) and then encrypted files are shipped back to KLDiscovery. RCMgr reduces unnecessary travel and in-person contact. Additionally, we are able to collect many other data types, even including certain types of mobile devices, remotely and securely. This allows us to continue servicing our clients while reducing the amount of travel and personal interaction that is commonly required to collect data.

Furthermore, in a significant moment for the eDiscovery community and in a unique collaboration, we have partnered with Consilio – a peer company in this space. With full visibility to our clients, we will be sharing resources for local collections in geographic areas where one of us may not have a physical presence. This will best position both organisations to deliver on critical client needs across a wide number of geographies and each organisation will be able to leverage local resources to reduce employee travel and prevent service disruptions for our clients. I firmly believe this crisis calls for companies to set aside competitive differences and come together in support of our clients.

From a data recovery perspective, wherever possible we are offering remote and mail-in data imaging services wherever possible. Our teammates are following all sanitisation best practices, with data recovery engineers performing the rebuild of data structures remotely. This approach allows KLD to continue providing 24x7x365 service globally with the fewest number of staff physically on site.

Overall, our global data recovery services can, and are, being performed seamlessly, remotely, and securely and we expect to be able to continue to do so for as long as necessary. We will remain vigilant and available to address the increased risk of data loss and data integrity for our customers, both commercial and consumer, as they navigate through unusual working patterns and environments.

Over the years, KLD has implemented significant safeguards to ensure business continuity. Security of our systems and preservation of our client's data has always been the priority for our business. Data in our possession is secured by some of the most advanced data security and disaster recovery technology available. Now more than ever, we believe there is no room for missteps when it comes to data security.

We have built in redundancy across all critical systems. Our most critical data centres are hosted in multiple geographies in the United States, operating sites on the East Coast and in the Mid-West with fibre optic connectivity. In case of a disaster in one location, we can move our entire load to the other location(s) so our clients can continue their work with little to no service interruption. To the best of our knowledge, no one else in the industry offers this level of geographic backup.

Malware and ransomware are real threats to everyone. Our technical measures and defence-in-depth techniques provide effective detection and response to malicious activity. A wide range of security controls, such as network segmentation, and tools are deployed across the technology stack and we supplement these technical controls with technologies to ensure defence-in-depth against all common threats. Additionally, KLD employees receive extensive training and education on information security.

These are difficult and uncertain times for everyone, but I believe in the human spirit and believe that the KLD family will persevere together. I am proud of our team and their incredible focus on delivering outstanding client service throughout these exceptionally challenging times.

I, along with our entire Executive Management Team, will be available 24x7x365 to personally discuss with you how KLD is adapting to these ever-changing dynamics. As always, KLD's success has been driven by the valuable input and feedback from our clients. We would welcome any suggestions or ideas on how to make the company more efficient during this critical time.

In the meantime, we wish continued health and safety for you and your families.

Sincerely,

Chris Weiler
Chief Executive Officer
KLDiscovery