OpenText™ Knowledge Discovery (IDOL) provides a data analytics platform for enterprises who need to extract maximum value from all their text, audio, video, and image data, from any repository in any file format. Providing data extraction, data enrichment, precise search and knowledge discovery, Knowledge Discovery helps organizations discover valuable information they did not know they had, whilst also identifying compliance risk associated with document contents such as personally identifiable information (PII) using entity grammars. 

With an unparalleled history in artificial intelligence and machine learning, Knowledge Discovery provides a unique set of optimized models to fit any application, accelerating time to value. Connecting and gathering information from diverse locations with over 160 connector types, including Public and Private Cloud and On-Premise, Salesforce, Microsoft® 365, Google Workspace and OpenText Content Solutions and can access and retrieve information and knowledge from over 2000 file types.  

May 2025: What’s new in OpenText Knowledge Discovery CE 25.2

This OpenText Knowledge Discovery (IDOL) CE 25.2 release includes various functional and performance improvements, new connectors, file format support, and many other additions. 

New connectors

• Improved OpenText Information Archive connector – An updated bidirectional connector for the Information Archive repository allows it to archive data as well as search and understand previously archived data.

• New Guidewire connector – A searching connector enables the ingestion of contract and policy content into the OpenText Knowledge Discovery index.

Named Entity Recognition - Landmarks exposed to pre-process

• Defined improvements in Named Entity Recognition – Added elements for Turkish Address, more city names in NZ Addressand the NZ Social Welfare number. 

• Defined improvements in PCI - Added extra delimiters for card details, in names and medical details, as well as expanded landmarks for Telephone context matching. 

• PII Japanese names accuracy improved - Increased accuracy of Named Entity Recognition detecting Japanese names, and improved ability to correctly identify Japanese names within a document.  

Opentext File Content Extraction updates and other improvements

• File formats - New Design Web Format (DWF) filter support, metadata now available from password-protected iWork files and additional formats detected. 

• Performance improvements – A reduction in the iWork reader disk footprint as well as a reduction of the footprint of the common third-party libraries. 

• Easier access to HTML Export from Filter – Improved ability to select XMP metadata elements and subfile extraction arguments added to C++ API 

• OEM platform – OEM Easier fault diagnosis with library-wide logging, improved security of inter-process mechanisms and better HTML Export fidelity for DWG Docs.  

January 2025: What’s new in OpenText Knowledge Discovery CE 25.1  

Organizations are looking to access all their Enterprise Data; but in a world where 90% of existing corporate knowledge is in Unstructured formats, over 50% of organizations are not tapping into this aspect of their knowledge with any form of discovery. Customers can use OpenText Knowledge Discovery with new interfaces, including using Natural language questioning to reach their information securely across all users. 

This OpenText Knowledge Discovery (IDOL) CE 25.1 release includes various functional and performance improvements, new connectors, file format support, and many other additions. 

New APIs added 

PII named entity resolution REST API – created a published REST API to access OpenTex Named Entity Recognition for PII functionality. Simplifies the adoption of Knowledge Discovery Al technology by internal and external OEMs 

Rich-Media analysis REST API – created a published REST API to access all Rich Media analytics functionality. Simplifies the adoption of Knowledge Discovery Al technology by internal and external OEMs 

Ingest and connectors 

New OpenText DAM connector

• A highly functional connector to the OpenText DAM product. This allows OpenText Knowledge Discovery to ingest and enrich content from the DAM repository and keep the data synchronized between the two systems to provide DAM content filtering using the Search Abstractor API 

Improved security in OpenText Content Management (Extended ECM) Connector  

• Increased alignment of document security policies between OpenText Content Management and OpenText Knowledge Discovery

• OpenText Content Management has numerous document security models above and beyond document folder based, where possible these have now been mapped to OpenText Knowledge Discovery's understanding of access rights

OpenText Named Entity Recognition - Landmarks exposed to pre-process 

Defined grammar landmarks are now visible at the pre-process stage of OpenText Named Entity Recognition

• Pre-processing can significantly help in reducing latency and workload, landmarks can be used to help make selection decisions at this early stage. DLP OEM vendors will benefit from this.  

PII Thailand names accuracy improved

• Increased accuracy of OpenText Named Entity Recognition detecting Thai names - the new grammar has an improved ability to correctly identify Thai names within a document  

Deployment and other improvements 

Automatic scaling OpenText Knowledge Discovery platform for Kubernetes

• Published Helm charts to deploy OpenText Knowledge Discovery with the ability to automatically scale resource - deployment size flexibility along with simplified expansion as and when required 

Vault integration with OpenText Knowledge Discovery components

• OpenText Knowledge Discovery microservices can securely store passwords and keys in the Vault repository (or equivalent)  
• Customers will benefit from cloud deployment best practice of secure central storage of passwords and keys etc. 

December 2024: What’s new in OpenText Knowledge Discovery CE 24.4 

Organizations are looking to access all their enterprise data; but in a world where 90% of existing corporate knowledge is in unstructured formats, over 50% of organizations are not tapping into this aspect of their knowledge with any form of discovery. Customers can use Knowledge Discovery with new interfaces, including using natural language questioning to reach their information securely across all users. 

This OpenText Knowledge Discovery (IDOL) 24.4 release includes various functional and performance improvements, new connectors, file format support, and many other additions. 

New API added 

Search Abstractor Rest API – created to support conversational question and answering with better context for AI generated responses. Conversation server, working with FAQ answers through Answer bank, Fact bank and now LLM’s remembers the context of questions within the conversations service in Knowledge Discovery. Adding to the great governance provided by curated answers. 

Filtering support in the Search Abstractor adds parametric fields for pre-filtering of documents. The search results can provide microscopic view of either single or multiple documents through criteria for fine grain filtering. The searching can now utilise prior knowledge to allow focus on RAG document retrieval, by using parametric fields to build a subset of entities for RAG. 

Working across text documents and images simultaneously in the search abstractor. Searching can now take criteria of both text and images as search criteria, and the results will also include similar images making Multi Modal search available. 

Ingest & connectors 

• Salesforce – Updating the connector to stay up to date with the changes in Salesforce. 

• Additional Pre filtering for focused selection added to OpenText Core Content Management & OpenText Content Management.

• IBM FileNet P8 Each document in FileNet can have multiple binary files which we now interrogate. 

Text analytics 

• Analytics: LLM based image matching - Image based transformers can be used to generate vectors for the Knowledge Discovery (IDOL) Index. Customers can now search for similar images based on not just the textual description but also the actual image content.   

Media Server 

• The Media Server as a NiFi Processor is now available with full functionality. This allow NiFi workflows and the ability to scale and manage the Media Server app though Nifi clustering. 

• Demo application with abilities to process and analyze images and other functionalities is now available in the Media Server for ease of use. 

File content extraction

• Filtering of Source Code comments 

• Support added for Metadata output for .mht files & QuickTime (.mov) files. 

• Extended format detection, with support for 93 additional file formats. 

• In HTML Export the pdf2sr reader to extract images from pages in a PDF file, you can now configure the size of the images to produce. 

Deployment & other improvements 

• HELM charts for Kubernetes provide a comprehensive set of options to assist complex deployments. With the 24.4 release we bring further enhancements to our HELM charts. 

• Named Entity Recognition SDK: You can load multiple grammars and then dynamically turn off what it is not needed for a particular document, allowing the flexibility of swapping grammars with less degradation of performance in comparison to the loading unloading cycle of grammars. The new thing is a reducing of the overall impact of this process.  

July 2024: What’s new in OpenText Knowledge Discovery (IDOL) CE 24.3

OpenText Knowledge Discovery CE 24.3 is a significant release for the third quarter of CY24. There is an increasing need for companies to reach a greater variety of data, which adds to the complexity of their search types. We allow all customers to achieve a suitable response in their enterprise-wide search across all levels of an organization.

Now part of Content Services, the combination of best of breed products will help organizations who are looking to access all their corporate knowledge through enterprise search. Bringing additional abilities to derive deeper insights, reach actionable conclusions quicker, and gaining a new level of investigative analytics, across content, teams, and projects. Document level security is also enhanced, with extra features to report and export securely and track data delivery end to end.

The Knowledge Discovery CE 24.3 release includes various functional and performance improvements, new connectors, file format support, and many other additions.

The main improvements in version CE 24.3 are listed below:

Ingest 

• Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Cisco Webex and Google Chat connectors – New connectors allow customers to collect collaborative video meetings for retrospective analysis and/or content retrieval as part of aviator search.

Text Analytics 

• Search abstractor – Customers will have better context provided by the RAG to pass on to the GenAI, therefore experiencing a higher likelihood of a correct answer being produced.

• Specific document retrieval – Customer can ask the system to find and return a specific document that matches their unique specification.

Rich Media Analytics 

• OCR improvement – Improved OCR for better support of scrolling text. Customers will experience a higher accuracy of extracted text from video imagery. 

• Speaker ID improvement – Customers will experience a higher accuracy of Speaker ID from video or audio files. 

KeyView 

• Added Audio and Video to the Export SDK.

• Added 30 new formats to File detection. 

• Metadata API Improved to limit duplicated data.

• New .NET API.

• Added support for Python 3.12.

Solutions 

• Knowledge Discovery Discover – Discover provides investigative analytics and advanced UI for searching and analyzing relations between objects, with project and team collaboration along with full oversight on the analytics process.

• Knowledge Discovery for Microsoft Exchange – Knowledge Discovery can be added as a BOT in MS Exchange allowing customers to directly access the functionality via simple natural language prompts emailed to a BOT email address in MS Exchange. 

Deployment & Licensing changes 

All components are now published to the Public Docker Hub repository to allow easier installation, maintenance and upgrades.

• Eduction Python EDK – Customers who prefer to program using the popular Python language can now use it to control our Eduction engine, simplifying their integration experience. 

• Eduction for Windows ARM – OEM users of Eduction EDK can now deploy on Windows ARM systems. 

• Additional license feature
  • From CE 23.2, we are introducing an additional license feature – a “version.key” 
  • The file is available in the SLD portal for customers with an active support contract and is required for all Knowledge Discovery installations running CE 23.2.
  • New key will be issued with every future Knowledge Discovery release. 

April 2024: What’s new in OpenText Knowledge Discovery (IDOL) CE 24.2

Organizations are looking for conversational access to enterprise data; in a world where 90% of existing corporate knowledge is in unstructured data, over 50% of organizations are not tapping into this aspect of their knowledge with any form of discovery. Customers can use the new interfaces with Q&A using natural language questioning to deliver their information with data securely to all users.

This OpenText IDOL 24.2 release includes various functional and performance improvements, new connectors, file format support, and many other additions.

New solution added: Teams client

• Customers can access functionality using simple natural language prompts directly via the Teams interface.

Ingest & connectors

• Drupal Connector – Updated to support the latest API changes and allow data extraction from old and new Drupal versions.  

• Google Workspace Connectors – Content extraction is now accessible from the major Google Workspace apps including Mail, Calendar and Chat using dedicated connectors.

• Web Connector 2FA – Updated to allow 2Factor Authentication. 

• Additional new connectors – Stack Exchange; Moodle and OpenText eDocs.

• IDOL Media Server – Can now run within NiFi, allowing processing of media streams & sources.

Text analytics

• Analytics: Search abstraction – IDOL can now automatically decide which index type to use to achieve the best response. The functionality abstracts the complexity of search types, democratizing Enterprise search, and allowing all users to achieve a suitable response, across all levels of an organization. 

• Multi-document summarization – Generative summary compiled from answers sourced from multi documents. The functionality provides richer answer to any question asked as it can be the combination of multiple parts sourced from different documents. 

• Dynamic clustering of vector results to identify grouping – Customers can use the grouping of results to select a variation in documents returned rather than returning very similar documents with no added information. 

• Analytics: LLM based image matching – Image based transformers can be used to generate vectors for the IDOL Index. Customers can now search for similar images based on not just the textual description but also the actual image content.   

Media Server

• The Media Server as a NiFi processor is now available with full functionality. This allow for NiFi workflows and the ability to scale and manage the Media Server app though Kubernetes. 

• Demo application with abilities to process and analyze images and other functionalities is now available in the Media Server for ease of use. 

KeyView

• Tabular data detection for One Note & pipe separated text.  

• OCR is now available on MacOS through the KeyView SDKs.

• Header & Footer are now configurable through Python APIs.

• Significant Performance improvements through Shared Memory Streaming.

• Additional Formats, Security & Compatibility improvements.

Deployment & other improvements

• HELM charts for Kubernetes provide a comprehensive set of options to assist complex deployments. CE 24.2 brings further enhancements to our HELM charts. 

• Eduction SDK Post-processing access to match context.

The post What’s new in OpenText Knowledge Discovery appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

If you're like some companies, your legal team may be using outdated, mish-mashed software or a myriad of point solutions to manage your eDiscovery processes. While this antiquated approach may work for some companies or use cases, many enterprise legal teams and their law firms, with a guiding hand of its IT leaders, are identifying and evaluating newer legal technology that better aligns with maturity and needs and satisfies ROI objectives—especially as AI and GenAI capabilities for eDiscovery explode onto the scene to help tackle rising volume and complexity of data in modern investigation and litigation matters. 

eDiscovery software comes with an extensive range of features, and many have strengths in one area (such as processing) and have some challenges in others (such as analysis or review). Hence, it's essential to identify your legal team's needs and priorities, along with their IT deployment preferences, and conduct thorough research. 

Analyst firm GigaOm's Radar for E-Discovery is a great starting point if you're actively seeking new eDiscovery solutions or simply want to know what's available on the market.

GigaOm provides evaluation criteria and guidance

The GigaOm Radar for E-Discovery highlights key e-discovery vendors. It identifies vendors and products that excel at helping organizations assess competing solutions in the context of well-defined features and criteria. 

The report describes key features and metrics used to evaluate vendors, provides an overview of the category and its underlying technology, identifies leading e-discovery solutions, and helps decision-makers evaluate these platforms to make a more informed investment decision. 

The report evaluates 19 different eDiscovery software vendors, including OpenText™, Everlaw, CloudNine, Veritas, DISCO, Nuix, Relativity, Reveal, and Consilio, on factors including vendor positioning (small-to-medium business (SMB), large enterprise, and/or law firms), deployment mode (cloud only, on-premises or hybrid), key features (e.g., multiple-device data collection, analysis & review, data redaction, real-time tracking of eDiscovery process, tagging & organizing documents, enterprise search, social media support, video & audio support) and evaluation metrics (speed, cost, scalability, security, and ease of use).

The GigaOm Radar

The GigaOm Radar plots vendor solutions across a series of concentric rings, with those positioned closer to the center being judged to have higher overall value based on an evaluation of the factors. The chart characterizes each vendor on two axes—balancing Maturity versus Innovation and Feature Play versus Platform Play—while providing an arrow that projects each solution's evolution over the coming 12 to 18 months. 

Here is the GigaOm Radar: 

OpenText named a leader

The industry report recognizes OpenText as an "Outperformer due to its high rate of delivery last year, high release cadence, and a strong roadmap for the coming year," outperforming all other vendors on a key feature comparison. OpenText received the highest possible scores for key features, including multiple-device data collection, analysis, and review; data redaction; real-time tracking of the eDiscovery process; tagging and organizing documents; enterprise search; and video and audio support, as well as business criteria—speed, cost, and scalability. The report also noted that "OpenText is one of the most flexible vendors in terms of deployment options—options include on-premises, private cloud, public cloud (SaaS), and hybrid."

If you're interested in learning more about eDiscovery solutions available on the market and a better understanding of their capabilities, relative strengths, and challenges, the GigaOm Radar report provides valuable information. You can obtain a copy of the report here. 

Learn more about OpenText eDiscovery solutions here.

The post How to generate a custom shortlist of eDiscovery vendors appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

We're excited to announce the latest update in OpenText eDiscovery CE 25.2, introducing a powerful new tool that transforms how legal teams organize and analyze evidence. Here's what's new:

OpenText eDiscovery Chronology

In modern litigation and investigations, organizing massive volumes of digital evidence chronologically to understand the who, what, where, and when of a matter can be daunting, labor-intensive, expensive, and potentially risky. The new OpenText™ eDiscovery Chronology addresses this challenge head-on. 

This interactive chronological narrative building tool helps legal teams track, organize, and analyze evidence by date—with full control of event metadata and complete audit trail capabilities. With Chronology, legal teams can leverage technology to streamline an otherwise manual task and quickly gain a clearer understanding of the sequence of events that may make or break a case. 

With integrated visual Chronology, legal teams can: 

• Easily identify potential gaps or inconsistencies in evidence earlier, reducing risks and unpleasant surprises 
• Save time by organizing events and facts without having to copy and paste text and link documents in Excel, Word, or third-party software 
• Quickly zero in on specific events or facts at any time, for faster, easier, and more thorough client reporting, early case assessment, and preparation for depositions, hearings, settlement discussions, and trial 

Chronology is a key feature that has been frequently requested by our customers and represents a significant enhancement to our platform's capabilities.

In addition to the new Chronology feature, OpenText continues to release enhancements to our existing capabilities.   

OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Key Document Summary – Now exportable! 

Initially released in April 2024, Aviator Key Document Summary empowers legal teams to create an AI-generated summary of key documents, complete with links to the documents, for improved document review efficiency and rapid insight into the case.  Now with CE 25.2, legal teams can more easily share document summaries with team members and clients with the ability to export Key Document Summaries, complete with working document links. 

Aviator Review – More intuitive than ever 

In our ongoing effort to increase efficiency and automate first-pass review, we have simplified the OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Review process to two simple steps:  

1. Input your review criteria 
2. Identify the designated document set on which you want Aviator Review to run

It is really that easy, and after the Aviator results are returned, legal teams have the option to quickly QC the document set using the “compare with human review toggle” and selecting the coded review field to be used for comparison. 

Expanded bulk redaction capabilities  

Accurate and consistent redaction of privileged, confidential, or sensitive information across all document formats is a critical component for reducing production risks.   Inadvertent production of privileged or sensitive information is a legal team’s worst nightmare.  As the type of data involved in litigation and investigations continues to become more diverse—going far beyond email and Word documents—it's essential that bulk redaction tools keep pace.  That's why we're pleased to expand OpenText eDiscovery bulk redaction to support the chat-specific redaction view.  We have also added support for Social Security Number patterns in the Bulk Redaction wizard for the native Excel viewer, the audio/video viewer (Cloud only), and the HTML chat viewer.  

 Additional new redaction capabilities include: 

• New “change redaction” functionality for the near native Excel viewer, the audio/video viewer (Cloud only), and the HTML chat viewer
• The ability to centrally manage the addition and deletion of redaction reasons from within the Review & Analysis module
• The addition of a dedicated Regular Expressions (RegEx) tester to support users writing their own customized RegEx for bulk redaction
• An improved RegEx pattern search for birthdates

These updates in OpenText eDiscovery CE 25.2 represent our ongoing commitment to providing powerful, user-friendly tools for modern eDiscovery workflows. By introducing new functionality and enhancing existing key features, we're responding to our most frequent customer requests and helping legal teams work more efficiently and effectively than ever before, delivering better outcomes for their clients and organizations. 

The post OpenText™ eDiscovery CE 25.2: Introducing eDiscovery Chronology for enhanced evidence organization appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

Staying ahead of industry regulations for documents is crucial. It is key for all content to be classified, organized, and easy to find. Assisted by information capture, intelligent document processing solutions offer a seamless way to manage these tasks, making your business audit-ready and compliant with ease.  

High stakes

Compliance with industry regulations is not just about avoiding penalties. It is about maintaining the integrity and reputation of your business. Regulatory bodies require organizations to keep accurate records and ensure that all necessary documents are easy to retrieve. This can be a daunting task, especially for large organizations with vast amounts of documents. However, with the right tools, you can simplify this process significantly.

Start with information capture solutions to ensure compliance 

As a key component of intelligent document processing (IDP), information capture solutions provide text-searchable files tagged with actionable data. Leading solutions leverage modern artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, like continuous machine learning (CML) and large language models (LLM), to automate the capture, classification, and extraction of data from documents. This ensures that all documents have accurate metadata and are easily retrievable when needed.

1. Automated data capture: Use AI, CML, and LLM technologies to automatically capture and classify documents. OpenText solutions eliminate tedious manual input and dramatically reduce human errors.

2. Accurate metadata: Extract accurate metadata from documents with a data capture solution like OpenText™ Capture to ensure that all necessary content is captured and stored correctly. This makes it easier to retrieve documents during audits. 

3. Scalability: Select an information capture solution like OpenText™ Core Capture that is scalable and suitable for organizations of all sizes. Whether a small business or a large enterprise, you can tailor it to meet your specific needs.

4. Compliance and Governance: Combine intelligent information capture with the automated workflows within your content repository or process automation software to maintain compliance by automatically classifying and filing files based on extracted metadata. You will strengthen information governance and simplify the auditing process.

Simplify audits with intelligent document processing solutions 

Audits are stressful and time-consuming. With IDP, auditing is much simpler. Intelligent document process solutions accurately capture and classify documents to ease retrieving any document needed for an audit. This not only saves time but also reduces the risk of non-compliance and the imposition of penalties.

For example, a leading bank in the Asia-Pacific region faced the challenge of digitizing millions of customer records to meet new regulatory guidelines. By implementing an OpenText IDP solution with OpenText Capture and OpenText™ Documentum™ Content Management, the bank created a centralized, secure repository for 21 million digital records. They not only met compliance obligations with a single store of searchable data, but also cut delivery time for key services by up to 50% and laid the foundation for highly personalized services.

Automate and futureproof compliance 

With intelligent document processing solutions, organizations satisfy compliance requirements when they maintain accurate records and plan for easy retrieval. Plan now to stay ahead of industry regulations and make your business audit-ready and compliant with ease.

Are you ready to learn how intelligent document processing solutions can help your organization ensure compliance and simplify auditing? Explore OpenText IDP solutions to get started.

The post Ensure compliance and simplify auditing with information capture solutions appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

Rapidly growing legal workloads are becoming hard to manage. The demand for legal services is expanding. The sheer volume, variety and complexity of data is making it difficult for legal professionals to support litigation and investigation activities and simultaneously govern their legal content and work product.   

Enter OpenText and its Legal Tech solutions – and, next week, Legalweek New York. 

OpenText will showcase its industry-leading, AI-powered eDiscovery solution at the annual event, where today’s legal leaders will gather and seek ways to identify and deliver necessary innovation.  

OpenText partners with some of the world’s leading enterprises and global law firms to address these challenges to improve business outcomes and deliver service excellence. Recognized as an eDiscovery leader in the 2024 GigaOm E-Discovery Radar Report, and with over two decades of market leadership, OpenText offers a composable and intelligent Smart Legal Platform that delivers unmatched AI-powered software and best-in-class services to support the end-to-end needs of law departments and law firms.  

Those offerings help OpenText customers:  

• Uncover facts rapidly to improve legal outcomes for litigation and investigations 

• Automate workflows and processes to improve the quality and accuracy of legal activities and mitigate risk  

• Accelerate document review with analytics and generative AI (GenAI) as well as leveraging other capabilities and services for end-to-end eDiscovery support 

OpenText also offers the latest in GenAI capabilities. OpenText™ eDiscovery Aviator enables customers to improve speed to facts for investigations and enhance eDiscovery document review planning and review activities.   

OpenText also offers best-in-class services that support and expand the coverage of legal and investigation teams. Those services include:  

• Digital forensics and collections, through which OpenText defensibly gathers and forensically preserves and investigates evidence  

• Managed review, through which highly trained and technically skilled OpenText attorneys support document review for scale, speed and efficiency 

• Investigations service, which enables customers to gain rapid insight into data for swift investigation and reporting  

“Growing competition and client demands, paired with regulatory complexity, are driving legal professionals to seek ways to increase productivity, optimize budgets and improve their service offerings,” said Savinay Berry, OpenText Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer. “AI and GenAI are true disruptors in this space, and OpenText is mobilizing its leading AI-driven eDiscovery solutions to enable its legal customers to meet those challenges.” 

The post OpenText to Showcase AI-powered eDiscovery Innovation at Legalweek New York appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

OpenText™ eDiscovery (Axcelerate) is a flexible, powerful, end-to-end eDiscovery and investigations platform that helps legal teams get to facts that matter sooner and inform case strategy.

OpenText™ eDiscovery CE 25.2: Introducing eDiscovery Chronology for enhanced evidence organization

We’re excited to announce the latest update in OpenText eDiscovery CE 25.2, introducing a powerful new tool that transforms how legal teams organize and analyze evidence. Here’s what’s new:

OpenText eDiscovery Chronology

In modern litigation and investigations, organizing massive volumes of digital evidence chronologically to understand the who, what, where, and when of a matter can be daunting, labor-intensive, expensive, and potentially risky. The new OpenText™ eDiscovery Chronology addresses this challenge head-on. 

This interactive chronological narrative building tool helps legal teams track, organize, and analyze evidence by date—with full control of event metadata and complete audit trail capabilities. With Chronology, legal teams can leverage technology to streamline an otherwise manual task and quickly gain a clearer understanding of the sequence of events that may make or break a case. 

With integrated visual Chronology, legal teams can: 

• Easily identify potential gaps or inconsistencies in evidence earlier, reducing risks and unpleasant surprises 
• Save time by organizing events and facts without having to copy and paste text and link documents in Excel, Word, or third-party software 
• Quickly zero in on specific events or facts at any time, for faster, easier, and more thorough client reporting, early case assessment, and preparation for depositions, hearings, settlement discussions, and trial 

Chronology is a key feature that has been frequently requested by our customers and represents a significant enhancement to our platform’s capabilities.

In addition to the new Chronology feature, OpenText continues to release enhancements to our existing capabilities.   

OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Key Document Summary – Now exportable! 

Initially released in April 2024, Aviator Key Document Summary empowers legal teams to create an AI-generated summary of key documents, complete with links to the documents, for improved document review efficiency and rapid insight into the case.  Now with CE 25.2, legal teams can more easily share document summaries with team members and clients with the ability to export Key Document Summaries, complete with working document links. 

Aviator Review – More intuitive than ever 

In our ongoing effort to increase efficiency and automate first-pass review, we have simplified the OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Review process to two simple steps:  

1. Input your review criteria 
2. Identify the designated document set on which you want Aviator Review to run

It is really that easy, and after the Aviator results are returned, legal teams have the option to quickly QC the document set using the “compare with human review toggle” and selecting the coded review field to be used for comparison. 

Expanded bulk redaction capabilities  

Accurate and consistent redaction of privileged, confidential, or sensitive information across all document formats is a critical component for reducing production risks.   Inadvertent production of privileged or sensitive information is a legal team’s worst nightmare.  As the type of data involved in litigation and investigations continues to become more diverse—going far beyond email and Word documents—it’s essential that bulk redaction tools keep pace.  That’s why we’re pleased to expand OpenText eDiscovery bulk redaction to support the chat-specific redaction view.  We have also added support for Social Security Number patterns in the Bulk Redaction wizard for the native Excel viewer, the audio/video viewer (Cloud only), and the HTML chat viewer.  

 Additional new redaction capabilities include: 

• New “change redaction” functionality for the near native Excel viewer, the audio/video viewer (Cloud only), and the HTML chat viewer
• The ability to centrally manage the addition and deletion of redaction reasons from within the Review & Analysis module
• The addition of a dedicated Regular Expressions (RegEx) tester to support users writing their own customized RegEx for bulk redaction
• An improved RegEx pattern search for birthdates

These updates in OpenText eDiscovery CE 25.2 represent our ongoing commitment to providing powerful, user-friendly tools for modern eDiscovery workflows. By introducing new functionality and enhancing existing key features, we’re responding to our most frequent customer requests and helping legal teams work more efficiently and effectively than ever before, delivering better outcomes for their clients and organizations. 

OpenText™ eDiscovery CE 25.1: Expanding capabilities and streamlining workflows

We're excited to announce the latest updates in OpenText eDiscovery CE 25.1, delivering enhanced GenAI functionality, improved redaction tools, and new data integration features. Here's what's new:

Transparent GenAI decision-making

Understanding OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Review document categorization just got easier with the new "Aviator Review last reasoning" field. Users can now view the LLM's reasoning directly in the results list alongside the "Aviator Review Results" column. This transparency enhancement enables better oversight of the review process, and the reasoning data can be exported for further analysis or documentation purposes.

Enhanced OpenText eDiscovery Aviator GenAI functionality

Our OpenText eDiscovery Aviator functionality, including Aviator Review, Aviator Summarization and Key Document Summary, has been upgraded to handle larger documents with greater efficiency.  At CE 25.1 enhanced chunking technology enables support for documents exceeding 180,000 tokens (approximately 60 pages) allowing legal teams to analyze and summarize lengthy documents without limitations.

Advanced redaction capabilities

We've reimagined our automated redaction functionality to provide an even more intuitive experience. The global redaction wizard has been rebuilt with user-friendly improvements.

For Cloud customers we've also extended support to the near native Excel viewer as well as the audio/video viewer and added the ability to hide redacted rows, columns, and sheets in Excel files during production, offering greater control over sensitive data management.

Enhanced audio/video timeline analysis (cloud only)

The media viewer now offers sophisticated speaker segmentation capabilities for audio and video files processed after the 25.1 release. Users can view audio streams separated by individual speakers in the timeline view, along with the ability to filter transcripts by specific speakers. This enhanced functionality makes it easier than ever to navigate and analyze audio/video content, particularly in cases involving multiple participants or lengthy recordings.

LaunchPad self-service Microsoft Exchange Online (M365) cloud connector (cloud only)

Streamlining data collection processes, CE 25.1 introduces direct self-service crawling capabilities for M365 data to Cloud applications. This new feature eliminates the time and hassle of extraneous data export and loading enabling legal teams to access critical cloud data with unprecedented ease and flexibility. To ensure M365 data remains secure this new feature incorporates secure authentication management through the new LaunchPad Source Systems page and integrates with AWS Secret Manager for secure credential storage.  

These updates in OpenText eDiscovery CE 25.1 represent our ongoing commitment to providing powerful, user-friendly tools for modern eDiscovery workflows. By expanding AI capabilities, enhancing redaction tools, and streamlining data integration, we're helping legal teams work more efficiently and effectively than ever before.

December 2024 (24.4) What is new in OpenText eDiscovery (Axcelerate) 24.4 

We’re thrilled to announce the latest updates in OpenText eDiscovery CE 24.4, designed to enhance your e-discovery workflows with powerful new features and improvements. Here’s a closer look at what’s new:

New OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Summarization (cloud only)

Introducing OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Summarization.  Powered by generative AI (GenAI), this document summarization functionality leverages deep learning to interpret and synthesize information from lengthy documents, providing concise summaries that help users quickly grasp context and implied meanings. With GenAI summarization, you’ll uncover deeper insights faster than ever before.

Improved OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Key Document Summary (cloud only)

With the latest enhancement to Key Document Summary, users can access the documents referenced in the AI-generated consolidated summary using a new link that displays at the bottom of the Key Document Summary panel.

Near Native Excel Viewer (cloud only)

We’re making it easier than ever to handle Excel documents with the Near Native Excel Viewer. Users can now produce redacted Excel files in both PDF and image formats, providing greater flexibility and convenience when working with sensitive data.

Enhanced audio/video (AV) transcriptions (cloud only)

See who is speaking!  With CE 24.4, new AV transcriptions automatically include generic speaker identification to make transcript review easier and faster. Other key AV transcription enhancements include the ability to filter the redaction list by redaction reason and redaction type.

Custodian Merge (cloud only)

The new Custodian Merge functionality in LaunchPad allows users to quickly remedy errors or inconsistencies in custodian names or profiles made during data loading. This feature simplifies the process, ensuring that your custodial data is always accurate and up to date.

PDF document splitting

Managing large PDF documents just got easier! Users can now select a subset of pages from a single PDF file to create sub-documents. This feature comes with tracking capabilities and the ability to delete sub-documents, giving you greater control over your data.

These updates in OpenText eDiscovery CE 24.4 are designed to enhance productivity and streamline your legal workflows. We’re committed to continuously improving our platform to meet your needs. Explore these new features today and experience the future of e-discovery!

July 2024 (24.3): What is new in OpenText Axcelerate 24.3 

Enhancing the power of Axcelerate with Aviator for GenAI Review    

With Cloud 24.3 OpenText provides Axcelerate Cloud users with the opportunity to revolutionize their review process with Aviator GenAI review.   

eDiscovery Aviator Review functionality 

Harnessing the power of large language models (LLMs), Aviator Review analyzes and categorizes large volumes of documents as responsive or non-responsive based on the input of plain language review criteria to help reduce the time and cost associated with traditional first-pass responsiveness review. Using the intuitive review criteria window, users can create and refine review instructions without legal prompt engineering expertise.  

Aviator Review also helps to control the cost of e-discovery projects by providing users with a cost estimate for each selected data set before they run it. Users can refine review criteria against smaller subsets of data as many times as required and adjust the criteria until it returns optimal results. When users are ready to run the refined review criteria against the entire corpus of the data, Aviator Review provides a comprehensive estimated review cost. 

Aviator Review can be used as a standalone tool or in conjunction with the Axcelerate technology-assisted review (TAR) protocols.    

Other Axcelerate enhancements at 24.3 include: 

Mass edit functionality  

For increased efficiency and tracking, Axcelerate now allows Case Managers and Investigators the ability to mass copy, replace, append, prepend, or use search and replace to modify field values. 

Enhanced end-to-end audio/video (A/V) workflows Axcelerate helps legal teams manage the complete lifecycle of A/V files. From ingestion, processing, transcription, searching, viewing, redaction and production, Axcelerate A/V workflows help to improve efficiency and reduce costs when manually reviewing and redacting A/V files. New A/V features include: 

• Modules are loaded individually to improve the viewer load time. 

• Users can jump to specific points in an A/V file by clicking on the corresponding words in the transcript. 

• Opus 2 support for redacted A/V files. 

LaunchPad   

The 24.3 release of LaunchPad offers faster scaling for batch processing in AWS so legal teams can get to review faster.  

Improved Excel Viewer*   

For CE 24.3 we are migrating to a new near native Microsoft® Excel® viewer service that is centrally hosted in each AWS region. The new service adds these additional Excel features: 

• Search within the document from outside of the viewer, with search hit highlighting support. 

• Sheet name redaction. 

• Ability to edit redactions. 

• Improved find and redact. 

• Support for Excel in Near Native view in Investigation applications. 

April 2024: What's new in OpenText Axcelerate 24.2

Introducing the extraordinary power of OpenText Aviator for Axcelerate  

With Cloud 24.2 OpenText provides Axcelerate Cloud users with the opportunity to leverage Generative AI for case and concept label summarization

Building on a long tradition of incorporating AI and machine learning to speed document review OpenText is thrilled to introduce the next generation of AI-enhanced productivity - Aviator for Axcelerate.  Aviator for Axcelerate enables users to create AI-generated summaries of key documents and concept group labels for improved document review efficiency and rapid insight into the case.  Leveraging the power of large language models (LLMs) Aviator for Axcelerate creates a summary of key documents, complete with document ID citations to enable users to confirm veracity.  Key document summaries help educate review teams for faster and more consistent review and deliver early insight into the evidence to help counsel assess the merits of the case.  Aviator will also assist review teams to rapidly understand concept group labels by providing intuitive plain language summaries within the review interface.

Other recent Axcelerate enhancements at 24.2 include:

• Enhanced Audio/Video (A/V) transcript and text redaction options - Search and redaction of A/V files (both video and transcribed text) is easier and more accurate providing users with the ability to:
  • View redaction overlays in both the viewer and the transcript prior to production
  • Search across timecoded transcript boundaries
  • Find portions of the video to be redacted and view results with a corresponding time stamp
  • Support archive and restore for projects in which the A/V viewer is activated
• LaunchPad enhancements – Self-service data upload and processing is easier and more powerful with additional status messaging and upload capacity (including PST files)
• Custodian management – Sync custodian data between LaunchPad and Axcelerate for greater visibility and control

January 2024: What's new in OpenText Axcelerate CE 24.1

Empower your team with more choice to maximize eDiscovery control and efficiency  

With 24.1, OpenText now provides Axcelerate Cloud users with more choices than ever to leverage the most appropriate TAR workflow to meet the time, risk, and budget constraints of each project and the preferred workflow of your team. 

OpenText eDiscovery solutions have a long history of incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics to dramatically improve review efficiency and lower costs while ensuring defensibility of process.  For more than 15 years we have been the leaders in Technology Assisted Review (TAR) for eDiscovery.  While first generation TAR (TAR 1.0) relies on subject matter experts to train the algorithm on a sample data set before review begins, second generation TAR (TAR 2.0) allows the review to commence immediately, saving both time and money.  OpenText Axcelerate TAR 2.0, featuring continuous active learning (CAL), learns from all reviewer coding decisions in real time to deliver the most relevant results in the shortest amount of time. Our TAR 2.0 is also paired with a unique contextual diversity algorithm that eliminates the risk of missing relevant documents by surfacing documents from contextually diverse pockets of data.  An intuitive TAR interface and workflows reduce learning curves so your team can uncover the most relevant evidence without delay, and visualization tools allow project managers to easily track the progress of review and accurately estimate time to completion.  

Whether you choose to leverage the familiar Axcelerate TAR workflow featuring continuous machine learning or try TAR featuring CAL and our unique contextual diversity algorithm, you can be confident that you are maximizing efficiency and accuracy of TAR review for every review scenario. 

Other recent Axcelerate enhancements include: 

• End-to-end eDiscovery support for audio and video (AV) files – Get the most efficient review of voluminous AV content.  OpenText’s built-in browser-agnostic AV viewer features intuitive YouTube like navigation as well as the option to transcribe AV materials for simultaneous review of AV content along with transcribed text. Text transcription of AV content enables you to search, code, redact and produce redacted AV content along with traditional text-based files. 
• Side-by-side document comparison – Choose any two documents and Axcelerate will show you all differences between the two documents (even subtle differences) to speed review of near-duplicates as well as conceptually similar documents. 
• Self-service data processing – Choose between traditional white-glove data upload and processing to Axcelerate or our new self-service processing and upload where circumstances require immediate review of relatively small volumes of data. 
• Password bank – Speed processing time and minimize exception files by adding a list of known passwords for use during processing to attempt to decrypt password-protected Microsoft 365 and Adobe PDF documents. 

No matter the circumstances of your case, OpenText Axcelerate offers your team the power to maximize efficiency and minimize risk in every matter. 

July 2023: What's New in OpenText Axcelerate CE 23.2

The latest licensed version of OpenText^TM Axcelerate^TM is out!  This version includes some great additions, including support for Opus 2^TM cloud, document translation for licensed customers of Amazon Translate^TM, decryption during ingestion, undo for bulk tagging, and so much more!  Let’s take a closer look.

New Features for Axcelerate Review & Analysis

Document Production & Bulk Printing.  Both of these features now allow users to select various landscape options.

Visualizer.  Now includes ability to export any of the charts within Visualizer to an image format and its corresponding data to a CSV format.

Global Redaction.  Now includes an option to exclude terms. Checking the box for Exclude Terms will reveal a new section where exclusionary terms can then be entered.

Redactions.  Redaction Reasons and/or redaction associated colors can now be changed across subsets of records.  This option can be found under Manage Redactions on the Actions menu within the Analysis page. 

Once Change Redactions option is opened, a pop-up window will appear with the available options for the select records.

Opus 2.  Axcelerate now supports production records being directly ported over to Opus 2 cloud.  Once Opus 2 has been configured to connect with Axcelerate, Case Managers can then port production records over within Axcelerate via the Actions menu within the Analysis page.

A pop-up window will then appear with options for this job where the Case Manager can select production output and metadata.

Documents sent to Opus 2 can be identified via the Sent to Opus 2 Smart filter under Work Product.

Magellan Business Intelligence.  Now includes a Data Progress Report that provides a filterable report on all data sets by custodian with details as to document counts and size.

Business Intelligence also now allows for sharing custom dashboards.

Machine Translation.  Axcelerate now has the ability to generate machine translations for customers with Amazon Translate licenses (translations via Veritone is also still available).  Once Amazon Translate has been set up, case managers are able to enable it for their projects and select a target langue for translation.  Please see your OpenText Program Manager for further details.

RegEx Pattern Search.  This feature has now allow users to define pattern searches across the addressee fields as well as the Title field.

New Features for Axcelerate Ingestion/ECA

Decryption.  7-zip, office, and PDF files can now be decrypted during ingestion when a list of potential passwords is provided within the Data Source configuration node.

Parsers

Encase Parser.  Now supports chat data from MS Teams and Slack.

MS Teams Parser.  Now supports the export of Channel names, redactions, edit dates of messages, message deletions, and Urgent and Important flags.

Connectors

MS Teams Connector.  Now supports:

• the inclusion/exclusion of all channels of a Team by leaving the channel value empty. A row with a channel name supersedes a row without a channel name; and
• extracting meeting details (start time, end time, duration, initiator).

Outlook for Mac Connector.  Now supports 2016 and 2019 Outlook versions.

MS Sharepoint Connector.  Now supports indexing metadata of Recycle Bin items.

New Admin Features

OCR.  OpenText MindServer Admin^TM now allows for changing the language group that will be used by OpenText Capture^TM.  This allows for changing character sets used for OCR to accommodate multi-language data sets.

PostgreSQL. Previous version has been upgraded to version 14 with backport available to 22.4.

Undo Tagging Operations.  Administrators can now use a command-line (undo.bat) to undo bulk or single tag operations.  This operation is tracked within both the Jobs Processing Smart Filter and Document History detail.

Performance

Did you know… Axcelerate has made substantial improvements to performance over the last few years?  See below for more details:

October 2022: What's new in OpenText Axcelerate CE 22.4

In litigation, investigations and regulatory compliance matters, legal teams are under intense pressure to deliver superior results on time and within budget. Staying on top of concurrent matters requires the ability to see the overall status of projects, individual reviewer progress, and the progress of key processes such as overturn tracking and reconciliation. These insights are critical to staff projects effectively, forecast and meet deadline dates, and minimize rework by identifying bottlenecks and catching review discrepancies early. 

OpenText Axcelerate 22.4 introduces a new reporting framework based on the Magellan Business Intelligence and Reporting (MBIR) platform. All business intelligence (BI) reports have been transformed in the new platform with additional insights available. Common custom dashboards centered around review productivity will now be available by default in all projects.  

CE 22.4 also includes a new user audit logging report so review project managers can monitor review activity by user.  

The integration of MBRI eliminates the need for custom configuration of dashboards, enhances usability and provides deeper insights within individual reports with more robust menus. Axcelerate’s new reporting platform is also delivered at no additional costs – clients no longer need to pay for third-party licenses for the legacy reporting features (Qlik).  

Additional enhancements with Axcelerate CE 22.4 include: 

• A new collector for Slack data to improve collection, ingestion, processing and review efficiency of Slack data for inclusive review; 
• The on-premise availability of the advanced chat viewer for chat support (introduced in Axcelerate OnDemand in CE 22.2); and, 
• Support for the EnCase EX01 file format to enhance ingesgtion and review all relevant data, whatever the source.

April 2022: What's new in OpenText Axcelerate CE 22.2

The requirements to collect data inclusively across all sources are more pronounced than ever. The need to include data from smartphones, including chat data is now prominent for litigation and investigations.

Support for the XRY parser

Axcelerate 22.2 introduces support for the XRY parser as an additional tool for collecting smartphone data for use by legal teams to support litigation and investigations and for use by policing and investigative agencies conducting criminal or regulatory inquiries. Supported data types include SMS, MMS, loose files, chat, geolocation data and browsing data including history and searches.

Enhancements to the Cellebrite parser

The Cellebrite parser, first supported within Axcelerate in July 2021 has also been enhanced to include geo location data, browser data, and notes. Other Cellebrite enhancements include that SMS/MMS exchanged with the same participant are now consolidated in one chat and each voice call is now displayed as a separate document. 

Additional features in Axcelerate 22.2 enhance the protection of sensitive data and the ability to audit overturns.

• RegEx pattern editing – Customize existing pre-configured RegEx patterns by editing an existing pattern instead of creating from scratch. This allows custom patterns to be fully supported with their own search filter by replacing an existing pattern that is already embedded in the search filters to streamline the detection and redaction of sensitive data to aid compliance with data privacy laws, improve PII detection for subject rights requests including DSARs and identify affected data in breach response investigations.
• Overturn reporting links to source data – Derive maximum value from overturn reporting by viewing the overturned documents in the results list to see the specific tagging changes. Filter by individual reviewer and key criteria including privilege, responsiveness and issues to see where overturns are occurring to catch issues early and avoid rework later. Instead of just seeing that overturns have occurred, the source data can be easily accessed and audited for enhanced insights.

January 2021: What’s new in OpenText Axcelerate CE 21.4 

Greater accuracy in detecting personal data is more important than ever due to cyber security threats, such as data breaches, data privacy mandates and escalating regulatory compliance requirements. To mitigate risk to the organization, swift and accurate identification of personal data is critical. However, many organizations approach it ad hoc, necessitating an efficient approach. 

Axcelerate CE 21.4 introduces enhanced RegEx for easier, faster and greater accuracy in PII detection: 

• RegEx has been decoupled from the redaction utilities for more direct access within Axcelerate 21.4. The number of pre-configured strings for personal data have been expanded. This makes it faster and easier to discover and redact sensitive data within the review process to avoid passing unredacted personal data to opposing council, to find and isolate personal data involved in data breaches, to redact the data of third parties as part of subject rights requests, and more.  

Additional features in Axcelerate CE 21.4 designed to improve review efficiency and drive down the cost of eDiscovery include: 

• Overturn reporting to expedite review by helping case managers to catch coding inconsistencies early on to standardize coding decisions and avoid significant rework later.   
• Chat attachment previews to address the fact that opening individual documents to assess their content is among the most time-consuming of review tasks. Chat attachment previews allow reviewers to focus their time on attachments that appear to be relevant and avoid time inspecting attachments that are not relevant thereby substantially improving chat data review efficiency. 

June 2021: What's new in OpenText Axcelerate CE 21.2

Legal teams and law firms are under pressure to contain the cost of eDiscovery against rising data volumes and new forms of data such as chat. Axcelerate CE 21.2 provides enhanced control and automation to start review sooner and enhanced chat, data sorting, and batching capabilities to complete review faster.

Update 1: Enhanced control and automation to start review sooner

Driving down the cost of eDiscovery requires a holistic approach to eliminating process lags and maximizing efficiency across all stages of a project. Axcelerate CE 21.2 introduces enhancements to improve control and automation of left-side tasks on the EDRM to get to review sooner:

• Customize project welcome emails to better provide context for reviewers (available for Axcelerate OnDemand and Private Cloud);
• Run searches as jobs to keep working while large searches run in the background; and,
• Automatically decrypt Azure® RMS data via the Microsoft® Information Protection SDK® to quickly expose this data for processing.

Update 2: New tools to complete review faster

Review comprises 70% of total eDiscovery project costs. Every capability that helps speed the review process has a material impact on containing costs. Axcelerate CE 21.2 includes the following features to complete review faster:

• Sort data by word count to better eliminate non-relevant data such as images with alt text; and,
• Group batches by any data field to better align data to the expertise of individual reviewers.

Update 3: Tame unwieldy chat data

Reviewing chat data can take significantly longer than other forms of data because of its volume and structure. Axcelerate CE 21.2 introduces new capabilities to review chat data faster with greater precision:

• Break down chat histories into manageable blocks of time to narrow the volume of data that requires review and make review easier;
• See chat attachments such as links, images and audio/video files to include related data faster; and,
• Connect loose chat files for easier inclusion.

Axcelerate drives down the cost of eDiscovery through analytics and automation. Axcelerate CE 21.2 builds on these capabilities to further help legal teams and law firms to streamline processes before review can begin and to help speed review processes as well.

For more information please visit the OpenText Axcelerate product page, the OpenText Discovery page or the Axcelerate – driving down the cost of eDiscovery video.

March 2021: What’s new in OpenText Axcelerate CE 21.1

Update 1: Axcelerate Investigation drives faster and richer ECA – now available OnDemand  

The Axcelerate Investigation platform–first released in October 2020 and part of the integrated OpenText™ Axcelerate™ investigation and eDiscovery solution–goes beyond traditional ECA tools to assist teams to find the facts quickly for active or anticipated litigation and investigations. Axcelerate Investigation combines robust collection, processing and culling with powerful front-loaded analytics in a single solution. Legal teams gain early insight into their data leveraging advanced analytics, minimize resources and costs, and maximize efficiency. A single platform, Axcelerate Investigation reduces potentially error-prone data transfers common with multiple point solutions and also reduces–or eliminates altogether–time-consuming and costly downstream document review costs. When full review and production of data is warranted, all data and work product can be automatically uploaded directly from Axcelerate Investigation to Axcelerate Review & Analysis OnDemand.

Update 2: Axcelerate Visualizer Heat Maps introduce multi-factor visual analytics

Axcelerate Visualizer, first introduced in October 2020, brings data analytics into focus for rapid insight into matters of all sizes and complexity. Axcelerate Visualizer Heat Maps expand on these capabilities by introducing flexible visual associations amongst analytics tools for greater visibility into the relationships, patterns and anomalies within the data.

Axcelerate Visualizer Heat Maps expand on these capabilities by introducing flexible visual associations amongst analytics tools for greater visibility into the relationships, patterns and anomalies within the data. Visualizer Heat Maps present new opportunities for insights that were previously impossible, or highly manual and time-consuming to derive. For example, reviewers can see file types overlaid with MIME types, or file sizes etc. for a multi-dimensional understanding of data or fact versus opinion ratings can be superimposed by custodian to better understand which custodians are prone to unsubstantiated assertions, and more.

Update 3: Near native Excel, additional efficiency enhancements and expanded connectors

Axcelerate CE 21.1 also introduces the integrated conversion of Excel files to expedite and simplify the review and redaction of this often-critical file type. Axcelerate CE 21.1 adds extensive and flexible redaction capabilities to help assure that privileged, personal or other sensitive data within Excel files can be effectively remediated with greater ease and assurance.

Other review efficiency enhancements in Axcelerate CE 21.1 include new tools for reviewing data in context so reviewers can choose how they want data to be ordered (e.g. by Bates number), and enhancements to the review progress and reviewer productivity reports so project leads can better deliver projects on time and within budget. Axcelerate’s extensive data source connectors have been expanded further with CE 21.1 – new connectors for WebDAV™ / Druva™, Google™ Calendar™, Google™ Cloud Storage™ and AWS™ S3™ have been added.

November 2020: What’s new in OpenText Axcelerate CE 20.4

Update 1: Axcelerate Investigation drives faster and more comprehensive early case analysis

With an increase in regulations, ESI types and data volumes, and data privacy mandates, efficiently assessing data and finding the information that will tell the story quickly yet comprehensively is critical to making decisions early on to manage costs and risk.

The all-new Axcelerate Investigation platform, part of the integrated OpenText™ Axcelerate™ investigation and eDiscovery solution, goes beyond traditional ECA tools to find the facts quickly for active or anticipated litigation. Axcelerate Investigation drives effective early case assessment and analysis by combining data collection, processing and culling capabilities with front-ended analytics to swiftly find facts and patterns for rapid insight and decision-making. These include stackable metadata filters, powerful text analytics and predictive analytics. If a full document review is warranted, data can be transferred seamlessly to the full Axcelerate cloud.

Axcelerate Investigation is also ideally suited to support a broad range of other types of investigations such as compliance, human resources, M&A due diligence, C-suite vetting and more.

Update 2: Axcelerate Visualizer further streamlines workflow

Axcelerate’s new Visualizer dashboard brings data analytics into focus for rapid insight into matters of all sizes and complexity. The new feature allows reviewers to expedite the ability to drill into the analytics faster to find facts and uncover responsive data with greater speed and precision. Axcelerate Visualizer incorporates communications, custodians, file mime types, office flags, phrase analytics, and more.

Axcelerate Visualizer is highly customizable. Reviewers and investigators can choose what data is displayed, how data is presented (e.g. bar graph, pie chart, etc.) and the level of detail for each vantage point into Axcelerate’s analytics. Axcelerate Visualizer is available across the Axcelerate platform including Axcelerate Investigation and Axcelerate Review and Analysis.

Update 3: Axcelerate introduces support for chat

With an increasingly remote workforce, chat has become a prolific part of organizational communications. Axcelerate CE 20.4 introduces the ability to parse data from chat platforms by transposing the data to align to the Axcelerate chat format.

Once ingested into Axcelerate, chat data and related content such as reactions and edits are displayed in a familiar chat style layout for easy review. What’s more is that Axcelerate treats chat like any other potentially critical data. Chat data is integrated into Axcelerate’s smart filters with its own dedicated filter and analyzed in tandem with all other data as part of concept groups, phrase analysis, text analytics and predictive analytics.

Axcelerate CE 20.4 includes a pre-configured parser for Microsoft® Teams® and a generic chat parser for virtually any other chat platform. Additional pre-configured parsers will be rolled out with subsequent releases.

Update 4: Additional reporting, usability, performance and connectors

Axcelerate CE 20.4 also includes new reports to quickly assess reviewer productivity and review progress to improve the ability to manage projects and address bottlenecks. PST extraction has also been enhanced for improved speed and reliability and export templates have been introduced to reduce effort on repeated workflows with similar criteria. New connectors for Gmail™ and Google™ Drive™ are also included to expand Axcelerate’s reach across data sources.

April 2020: What’s new in OpenText Axcelerate Cloud Edition (CE) 20.2

Update 1: New UI simplifies navigation

The new UI provides more than a usable interface. It surfaces contextual insights in a highly visual display that is easy to navigate and allows reviewers to quickly understand the content under review.

Update 2: New entity identification with OpenText Magellan integration

Axcelerate Release 16 EP7 introduced integration with OpenText™ Magellan™ text analytics for sentiment analysis and automated entity identification for people and places. Auto-identification and extraction of entities (organizations) help reviewers answer “who” and “where” questions and home in on relevant content faster.

Enrichment jobs now automatically enhance documents for sentiment and all types of entities with a single operation. In addition to sentiment tonality pie charts, sentiment indicators are automatically ranked within documents so reviewers can zero in on the top positive and negative statements within each document. Statements are also rated as to whether they are based on opinions or facts to help reviewers assess the voracity of interesting comments.

Update 3: Automated document summaries powered by Magellan

Automated document summaries make the efficient review more efficient, eliminating the need to open individual files and review them to figure out what they are about. Individual sentences are assessed within each document and the most representative content is assembled into a concise paragraph for quick insights.

Update 4: “Find more like me” with Predictive Search

Axcelerate’s new Predictive Search provides a “find more like me” capability to easily home in on relevant content. Documents that are known in advance to be highly relevant, or the best exemplars uncovered in initial search results, are compared against the entire corpus to quickly surface documents with similar content. Predictive Search can also be used as a QC tool to quickly assess whether the final discovery set is inclusive of all relevant content.

Update 5: Negative proximity operator

The new negative proximity operator is a powerful tool for isolating homonyms and terms that often appear in signature lines, such as attorney-client privileged, enhancing efficiency and search effectiveness by reducing, or eliminating altogether, false positives, thus minimizing the number of documents that require review. Reviewers can stipulate that keywords have to be within a specified number of words to other keywords to be surfaced as a positive hit, substantially reducing false hits.

Axcelerate CE 20.2 delivers an intuitive UI with simplified navigation and Predictive Search, enhanced entity extraction, document summaries, and a negative proximity operator each of which contribute to review efficiency. Together they deliver a multiplier effect to further elevate Axcelerate as a leading end-to-end eDiscovery solution on a single platform.

Previous updates

November 2019: What’s new in Axcelerate, EnCase eDiscovery, and Decisiv Release 16 EP7

July 2019: What’s new in Axcelerate and EnCase eDiscovery Release 16

Learn more about eDiscovery

The post What’s new in OpenText eDiscovery appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

Ensuring everyone has equal access to online content and services isn’t just good practice – it’s becoming law. The European Accessibility Act represents a significant step forward in making digital content accessible to all users, regardless of their abilities. Let’s explore what this means for businesses. 

What is the European Accessibility Act? 

The EAA is a piece of legislation that sets comprehensive accessibility requirements for digital products and services across the European Union. Its aim is to consolidate EU regulations and eliminate barriers created by divergent accessibility rules put into place by member states. Some of these divergent laws that may be more stringent include:

• UK – Equality Act 2010
• Spain – Legal Royal Decree 1/ 2023
• France - Law N° 2005-102
• Germany – German Accessibility Improvement Act
• Greece – Rights of Special Persons in Greece
• Czech Republic – Web Accessibility Initiative
• Portugal – Decreto-Lei n.o 83/2018
• Italy – Decree 82/2022

Each of these laws have their own sets of fines, but are also largely based off the same criteria as the EAA.

Why does it matter?

For businesses operating in or selling to the EU market, compliance with the EAA is crucial. If you do not comply you may:

• Be blocked from doing business in the EU
• Face fines of up to 6-7% of a company’s global revenue
• Adversely affect your reputation

You may say: “my users don’t complain about accessibility. I may not get fined." That’s possible, but there are other factors at play that are important to consider: only 10% of people report accessibility issues with the other 90% clicking away when frustrated.¹ That’s lost business – and according to the World Economy Forum, the disability market has spending power of $13 trillion. That’s a significant addressable market that would impact your bottom-line, fines aside. It’s no surprise that according to Accenture’s analysis of the Disability Equality Index companies that prioritize digital inclusion are:

• Twice as likely to have higher shareholder returns
• Have 28% higher revenue
• See 30% better performance in economic profit margins²

Who does it affect? 

The Act impacts any company doing business in the EU – you don’t have to be headquartered in the EU to be affected by the law. You will be affected if you are a North American or APAC company doing business in the EU.

The Act impacts a wide range of services and products:

• Consumer and hardware
  • E-commerce sites
  • E-books
  • Audiovisual content on websites and apps 
  • Consumer terminals (routers and modems)
  • Computer hardware
• Financial services and identification
  • Banking and financial services information 
  • Payment terminal software
  • Payment terminal hardware
  • Identification methods, such as e-signatures and payment services)
• Public sector, transportation and ticketing
  • Public sector web sites
  • Transportation services
  • Web and mobiles services for ticketing and transportation
  • Emergency electronic communications

When does it take effect? 

The EAA takes effect on June 28^th, 2025.

Key requirements for digital content 

Under the EAA, digital content providers must ensure their materials are accessible to users with various needs. Companies need to follow EN 301 549, which is based off WCAG 2.1 AA and focuses on products and assets being:

• Perceivable - Information and interfaces must be perceived by users through more than one sense.
• Operable – You cannot have an interface with interactions a user can’t perform. Users without vision, perception of color, hearing, or vocal capability and / or have limited vision, hearing, manipulation of strength, reach, or cognition must be able to user the product or service.
• Understandable – The information and the interface of the digital product must be easy to understand.
• Robust – The content should be able to be interpreted correctly by a wide array of devices including screen readers.

Some other requirements included within the EAA for digital documents such as PDFs, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files that build on the POUR model above include:

• Physical accessibility: Services must be operable for those with limited manipulation or strength 
• Visual accessibility: Content must be usable without vision or with limited vision, including proper contrast and color alternatives
• Alternative text for images: Images must include descriptive text to articulate the purpose of the image and the contents within so screen readers can convey information to users who can’t see images. 
• Navigability: Bookmarks, links, and a logical reading order help users navigate documents.
• Color contrast: Text and background contrast must be sufficient to make content perceivable to those with visual impairments.
• Forms: Interactive elements, such as forms, should be labelled and easy to navigate using a keyboard.
• Technical compatibility: Products must work seamlessly with assistive technologies 
• Document accessibility: Digital documents must be properly structured with features like screen reader compatibility and clear navigation 

Important deadlines and exemptions 

Businesses should note that while the Act is comprehensive, it includes some important exemptions.

• Accessibility compliance cannot impact the free movement of goods and services
• Companies with fewer than 10 employees are exempt from the legislation
• Accessibility requirements do not apply to products and services that would be fundamentally altered as a result of this directive causing disproportionate burden
• Digital documents published before June 28, 2025, are not required to meet the new standards unless they’re updated or republished after this date. 

Universal design: a core principle 

The EAA emphasizes “universal design”—the concept that products and services should be usable by all people without requiring specialized adaptation. This approach benefits not just those with disabilities but creates a better user experience for everyone. What if you just wanted to more quickly navigate a file to find the information you wanted? The keyboard hotkeys based off the accessibility tags (headers and paragraphs) enable that. What if you suddenly broke your wrist and can’t use a mouse? You know have a temporary disability! Accessibility regulations are here for you. It really is for everyone.

Business implications 

For businesses operating in or selling to the EU market, compliance with the EAA is crucial. Key considerations include: 

• Documentation retention for 5 years after product launch 
• Tracking of non-compliant products and services 
• Potential penalties for non-compliance 
• CE conformity marking requirements for market access 

Moving forward

How OpenText can help accessibility in-design and post-composition 

The European Accessibility Act represents more than just regulatory compliance—it's about creating a more inclusive digital world. By embracing these accessibility requirements, businesses can: 

• Expand their market reach 
• Demonstrate social responsibility 
• Improve user experience for all customers 
• Stay ahead of evolving digital accessibility standards 

As we move closer to the implementation deadlines, organizations should start evaluating their digital content and services against these requirements. If you’re looking for post-composition accessibility software or customer communications management software with accessibility built in the design, OpenText has the right solution. The investment in accessibility today will pay dividends in both social impact and business compliance. 

Turn accessibility into your advantage

Make accessibility a cornerstone of your customer communications! Join us Thursday, January 30 at 11 a.m. E.T. to explore how accessible documents can go beyond compliance and drive meaningful customer connections. Reserve your spot! Register now.

The post Are you ready to meet the European Accessibility Act 2025? appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

OpenText eDiscovery and Legal Solutions empowers legal teams to thrive in today’s data-driven world—handling any type of data, at any speed, from anywhere. The result? Faster, smarter decisions in litigation and investigations. And don’t just take our word for it. 
 
OpenText™ is proud to be named a Leader and Outperformer in the latest GigaOm Radar Report for E-Discovery. This recognition underscores OpenText’s position as one of the top vendors in the eDiscovery market. GigaOm's evaluation serves as an invaluable resource for legal departments and law firms looking to navigate the eDiscovery landscape and select the right technology. 

Choosing the right eDiscovery provider  

Digital transformation in the legal sector is moving at lightning speed and keeping pace is no longer enough. Lawyers need automation and analytics to identify key facts faster, spot patterns that would be missed manually, and streamline operations and workflows.  
 
Legal teams are under increasing pressure to deliver timely and defensible responses to litigation and regulatory demands. To do this effectively, they need robust eDiscovery tools that can scale quickly and simplify complex workflows, all while reducing costs. These tools are needed to ensure that legal teams can accurately and expeditiously assess the merits of cases, support investigations, and respond to litigation discovery and other production demands in a timely manner.   
 
In today’s legal technology market, eDiscovery solutions are far from a one-size-fits-all solution. They can deliver a very wide range of features that are purposefully built to address specific key stages of the Electronic Discovery Model (EDRM) yet are ill-equipped to perform other tasks.  As the report explains, some solutions provide end-to-end capabilities, while others stick to either the initial stages (identification, preservation, collection, and processing) or the later stages of the model (review, analysis, production, and presentation). How do decision-makers make an informed investment decision?  The GigaOm Radar is one way to better navigate the market and select the right tools for their needs. 

GigaOm Radar overview  

It assessed how well e-discovery solutions were designed to serve specific target markets (SMB, larger enterprise, and law firms) and deployment models.  Other decision criteria included, among other things, a review of key features and provided a snapshot of the technical capabilities of available solutions, defined the perimeter of the relevant market space, and gauged the potential impact on the business.

Let’s take a deeper dive into what the report had to say about OpenText.  

OpenText is a Leader in e-Discovery

As illustrated in the chart below, GigaOm evaluated 19 of the top e-discovery solutions based on capabilities, non-functional requirements, and other key criteria.  The report recognized OpenText as having one of the most comprehensive eDiscovery solutions on the market, outperforming Relativity, Nuix, Reveal, and other software vendors evaluated. It earned its Outperformer status due to its high rate of delivery last year, high release cadence, and a strong roadmap for the coming year. GigaOm also recognized OpenText as one of the most flexible vendors in terms of deployment options (off-cloud, private cloud, public cloud (SaaS), and hybrid) and for its broad coverage of nearly the entire EDRM.

Why OpenText should be on your eDiscovery shortlist  

Analysis, review and automation  

OpenText’s eDiscovery solutions have a long history of incorporating advanced analytics and machine learning to dramatically improve review efficiency and lower costs. According to GigaOm, OpenText earned the highest possible score (5/5) in analysis and review, largely due to its robust Technology Assisted Review (TAR) protocols and visualization tools to show associations within data for deep insight. It also stood out (5/5) for its powerful search capabilities, including unsupervised machine learning and entity detection tools that identify and categorize the names of people, places, and organizations. Plus, OpenText Smart Redaction technology received top marks for applying redactions across documents, against native audio-visual files, and for automated redaction of PII.   

Legal tech with generative AI: supercharge your data  

OpenText eDiscovery Aviator supercharges generative AI to put your data to work for you. With our OpenText eDiscovery Aviator, legal teams can quickly unlock insights and make smarter decisions, regardless of data volume, source, or format—and harness the power of data with an all-in-one solution for AI-driven insights, productivity, and risk management.  GigaOm notes that OpenText provides “automatic identification and AI-generated summarization of key documents, AI-generated natural language summaries of concept cluster labels for intuitive contextual insight, and generative AI review powered by (LLMs).”  

Beyond litigation: governance, compliance and more  

OpenText’s leadership in data governance, regulatory compliance, and enterprise-scale solutions sets it apart in the evolving eDiscovery landscape.  The GigaOm report highlights OpenText’s ability to support specific use cases including “data privacy and subject rights requests to meet regulations such as GDPR and CCPA; data breach analysis and reporting to help assess the impact of a data breach and comply with breach notification rules; and investigations that aim to quickly gain insights into the data in order to deliver the facts for internal, external, and regulatory investigations in a timely fashion.”  Often these activities are aligned with broader initiatives to address content sprawl, content risk, and disposition of content.  As acknowledged in the report, “[u]nlike most of its competitors, OpenText also provides information governance solutions through its content management portfolio.”  

Conclusion  

The legal industry is on the cusp of a massive digital transformation. eDiscovery tools that leverage AI, automation, and advanced analytics are no longer just “nice-to-haves”—they’re essential to staying competitive and improving case outcomes. Speed to insight is the new normal, and managing risk proactively is now a must. Legal teams that embrace these tools with confidence will not only keep up with the evolving landscape but also set the pace for others to follow. OpenText delivers the tools needed to make that leap—from eDiscovery to AI-driven insights, automation, and beyond. 

Gain valuable insights into the eDiscovery market landscape by downloading the GigaOm eDiscovery Radar report, which offers a comprehensive analysis of available solutions, their capabilities, comparative strengths, and potential challenges. 

Take the next step. Partner with OpenText for your eDiscovery needs and experience exceptional outcomes powered by our comprehensive eDiscovery software and advanced Legal AI tools. 

The post OpenText named a Leader and Outperformer in the GigaOm Radar for E-Discovery appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

The energy and resources sector including utilities, oil and gas, chemicals, and metals & mining is one of the most hazardous in the world.

The top hazards range from explosions and fires, chemical exposure, electrical hazards, dropped objects, machine related injuries, slips and falls, and many more. Despite the hazardous nature, the safety performance has continually improved over the last 4 decades.  For example, 2023 had one of the lowest property damage losses for the hydrocarbon industry. According to Marsh Specialty ‘100 largest losses’, just two incidents occurred in 2023 with a combined loss of approximately $600 million, one of the lowest loss years since 1987.  Also, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the incident rates of nonfatal occupational injuries for these industries ranged from 1.4 to 1.9, far below the average for all industries at 3.0. Despite this positive trend there’s plenty more room to reduce risk and advance along the ‘journey toward zero’ health, safety, and environment (HSE) incidents that every company in this sector is on.

The power of root cause analysis

Having worked in the energy industry for two decades and seen accidents and have been exposed to hazards, root causes analysis (RCA) was engrained in me by the organizations I worked for and served. RCA is a powerful tool that allows organizations to dive deep into HSE incidents or recurring problems, identifying and addressing the core issues that cause them. Unlike surface-level troubleshooting, RCA goes beyond symptoms to uncover systemic weaknesses. By systematically asking questions-often using methods like the ”5 Whys” or Fishbone diagrams – RCA helps organizations implement changes that prevent issues from recurring, leading to more safe and efficient operations. 

Also ingrained in me was the belief that 100% of all incidents are preventable. Any business leader across this entire sector would agree and even reinforce this belief within their teams. There’s one simple equation that can help categorize identified root causes and to assist in finding solutions to prevent future incidents along the journey to zero.

Information + human action = business outcomes

All of us are tasked with creating positive business outcomes. Improved safety performance and reduction of risk are just two examples of business outcomes companies strive to improve upon across this sector. Any business outcome is created from two key ingredients, information and human action. Since this sector is asset intensive, this equation could easily be modified to be information + asset performance + human action = business outcomes. While assets are becoming more autonomous over time, these machines will always require human action in some shape or form. Humans are needed to install, operate, repair, and perform many other actions across the asset lifecycle. For simplicity, the more basic version of this equation will be focused on here.

However, not just any information or human action will create business value. What was considered productive work decades ago may be considered unproductive today. The best use for human action is addressing tasks that machines don’t perform as well, as safely, or as cost effectively. Likewise, the best jobs for machines are tasks that humans don’t perform as well or as effectively. The best information can be trusted to boost human (and asset) productivity, free knowledge workers from manual and error-prone steps and minimize risk.  Just as human action needs to be managed to achieve business outcomes, so does information. So, the more accurate equation that is implied in this formula is that ‘management’ underpins all three components.

If an accident were to occur and root cause analysis was performed, examples of failures from the management of human action might be; failure in work prioritization, procedure not followed, inadequate training, poor communication, fatigue, and many more.

Performing the same exercise but for failures in information management might include outdated safety protocols, inaccurate asset documentation, poor visibility into the transaction status of spare parts, no predictive maintenance insights, emergency response information poorly communicated, and many more.

Performing the same exercise using the longer form of the equation that includes asset performance, the root cause of an incident may stem from an asset failure however the solution will always be grounded in either improved human action management or information management.

Gartner defines Information Management, as a method of using technology to collect, process and condense information with a goal of efficient management. OpenText executes to the spirit of that definition by organizing, connecting, automating, and protect data and in the case for energy & resources sector to safely and reliably deliver energy and essential commodities to the world.  The some of the root cause(s) of any incident likely stems from inadequate information management where information is disorganized, disconnected, unautomated, and/or unprotected.  Utilizing information management technologies and best practices can help continuously improve upon and eliminate these root causes for safer operations. Gen-AI combined with Information Management technologies and best practices will play a key role along that journey to zero.

Gen-AI will play a key role along the journey to zero

Generative AI places information at the fingertips of humans and has close ties to the information management domain. Great AI requires great information management because the results from generative AI will be more correct and trusted when information is organized, connected, automated, and secured.

Here are some ‘art of the possible’ examples of Information Reimagined and how Gen-AI will play a key role along the journey to zero whether inadequacies in information management are identified as a root cause of an incident or whether a proactive approach to risk reduction is taken.

• Use an intelligent AI content assistant that puts chat-based conversational search, content discovery (ex. safety procedures, job safety analysis, material safety data sheets, emergency response plans, operating instructions, and much more), summarization, and translation at the speed of light. Trusted knowledge is available simply by asking a question. See OpenText Content Aviator for more detail.
• Ask a conversational Gen-AI, self-service advisor to gain better insights around supply chain transactions.  Examples might include “has a service order been placed for our next fire safety inspection?” Or “Is there fuel filter for Brand X in inventory at the Midland field office?” See OpenText Business Network Aviator for more detail.
• Know the location of personnel in hazardous areas, track the delivery of essential spare part replacements, and predict failures before they occur. See OpenText IoT Aviator for more detail.
• Through a conversational interface, find answers to keep people safe by analyzing 160+ repository types and 2,000 file types.   Examples might include “were there any abnormalities identified on the last drone inspection?” And “When is my H2S safety certification valid through?” See OpenText Aviator Search for more detail.
• Elevate customer communications with empathy during emergency response. Craft personalized messages for affected customers. See OpenText Experience Aviator for more detail.
• Tap the knowledge from IT & non-IT service tickets to quickly address unsafe situations.  Use a virtual subject matter expert, available 24/7, that speeds up issue resolution and suggests solutions to empower users to self-resolve potentially unsafe situations. See OpenText IT Operations Aviator for more detail.

The post Improve safety using root cause analysis and strengthening information management appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

Whether a small business or a large enterprise, all organizations are feeling the impact of ransomware. Attackers have honed their tactics, taking advantage of generative AI to make phishing attacks exceedingly clever while continuing their focus on disruptive supply chain attacks. The next generation of threats are more targeted, and with the assistance of AI and a thriving cybercrime as a service market, the barrier to entry for aspiring cybercriminals has never been lower.  

In the third annual OpenText™ Cybersecurity 2024 Global Ransomware Survey, we put a magnifying glass to these growing attack techniques and vectors. Disturbingly, while companies of all sizes are aware of the risks they face, and have taken measures to improve resilience, successful ransomware attacks and payments continue to increase.  

Ransomware strikes 

Alarmingly, nearly half of respondents (48%) reported that their company has previously experienced a ransomware attack, with almost three-quarters (73%) of companies experiencing a ransomware attack this year. Among those who experienced a ransomware attack in the past year, about half (46%) paid the ransom, with 31% of those payments ranging between $1 million and $5 million. The survey also revealed that SMBs experienced more ransomware attacks than large enterprises this year, highlighting the need for organizations of all sizes to defend against ransomware. 

With 39% of companies testing the reliability of recovery plans with techniques like dry runs once every few months, and 29% twice a year, companies can recover data after these attacks. Almost all respondents (97%) reported the successful restoration of their organization’s data. Data management solutions help companies retrieve this data and keep their businesses running. 

Supply chain attacks at center stage 

A majority of respondents (91%) are concerned about ransomware attacks on their company’s downstream software supply chain, third-party and connected partners. Recent breaches by key industry vendors like Change Healthcare, Ascension and CDK Global that caused sector-specific outages and losses made respondents more concerned about being impacted by a supply chain attack; almost half (49%) are concerned enough to consider making vendor change. 

Among those who experienced a ransomware attack in the past year, 62% reported that they have been impacted by an attack originating from a software supply chain partner. Notably, 90% of these respondents are planning to enhance their collaboration with software suppliers to improve security practices over the next year.  

Given the massive sector-specific outages caused by these recent breaches and other impacts, two-thirds of respondents (67%) are planning to increase collaboration with software suppliers to improve security practices in the next year. Only 15% are not. Almost three-quarters (71%) of respondents assess the cybersecurity practices of their software suppliers at least twice a year.  

In addition to regular security audits of software suppliers, vendors and partners, which ranked as the most important tool to help secure the software supply chain, the implementation of advanced threat detection tools is the second most important. Threat detection and response tools need to go beyond traditional borders so organizations can proactively protect their assets from attacks. 

AI-powered attacks 

While the rise of AI empowers security teams to more effectively triage alerts and automate response, AI also helps cyber criminals be more efficient, contributing to an increase in phishing attacks and growing fears about AI-powered attacks. 

Nearly half (45%) of respondents observed an increase in phishing attacks due to the widespread use of AI, and among those who have experienced a ransomware attack, 69% noted an uptick in phishing. Similarly, 55% of survey participants believe their companies are at greater risk of suffering a ransomware attack due to the proliferation of AI usage among threat actors.  

Investing in cybersecurity 

Awareness for ransomware threats is growing and so is regulation. According to 37% of respondents, regulatory compliance or cyber insurance requirements are the primary drivers for increasing ransomware defense investment within the software supply chain.  

As such, about three-quarters (72%) of respondents are covered by cyber insurance in case an attack is successful. A surprising 25% are not and only 3% are not because it’s too expensive. The financial risks, however, presented by the increasing frequency and sophistication of cyber threats make cyber insurance an essential investment. 

Businesses are also increasingly investing in cloud security as well as security awareness and phishing training. Almost two-thirds (66)% of respondents reported that their companies are prioritizing cloud security. Over half (56%) of companies outsource security to an IT or managed services provider. 

Furthermore, 91% of respondents stated their companies require employees to participate in security awareness or phishing training. In 2024, 66% of companies conducted training at least once per quarter, a significant increase from 39% in 2023. The rise in security awareness training is a positive indication that organizations are taking ransomware threats seriously and understand the risk that employees on the front lines represent. Respondents believe current security awareness programs and training are effective in addressing AI-related risks – 88% of respondents think programs and training are very or somewhat effective. 

Avoid paying the attacker’s paycheck 

The findings from OpenText's Cybersecurity 2024 Global Ransomware Survey reveal that while investments in cybersecurity are increasing, companies are still paying ransoms at alarming rate. Paying a ransom only perpetuates the problem. If we are to disrupt the growing trend of ransomware attacks, it starts with companies refusing the pay the ransom and instead relying on their cyber resiliency playbook. 

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