Information Governance
Most companies embrace the benefits of “big” or structured data and the related business intelligence it delivers. But with big data comes big responsibility for managing immediate and future legal and regulatory risk. Information governance goes beyond retention and disposition to include privacy, access controls, and other compliance issues.
Data Archive
Long-term data storage is a governance, risk, and compliance decision as much as an IT one. The wrong strategy creates exposure in litigation, regulatory inquiries, and breach scenarios most organizations never anticipate.
Gemean’s GRC advisory services team conducts client-specific assessments to identify the right archiving solution for each organization’s data types, retention obligations, and operational profile.
Gemean provides:
- Assessment of structured, unstructured, and legacy data storage needs
- Client-specific evaluation of long-term governance risk consulting and retention obligations
- Remote, cloud-based archiving solutions that preserve computing resources for day-to-day operations
- Storage strategies defensible when a legal hold is triggered or a regulator asks questions
GDPR & Data Privacy
Data privacy obligations are expanding across jurisdictions, and the cost of falling behind is not just regulatory. It is operational, reputational, and legal.
Gemean’s GRC advisory services team assists clients with the design and implementation of custom privacy solutions built around their specific regulatory obligations. Whether the requirement is GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, NYDFS, SEC, or PCI, Gemean conducts client-specific assessments grounded in the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, identifying gaps in existing programs and building repeatable, defensible processes to close them.
Our privacy service offering includes but is not limited to the following:
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Maturity Assessments
- California Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CCPA) Priority Assessments
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Assessments
GDPR & Data Privacy
At Gemean, we know that data privacy is key to protecting your business and your clients. Our team knows how to help you navigate the regulations surrounding data privacy.
GDPR
Gemean understands the nuances of different industries and their regulatory hurdles.
Whether is HIPPA, GDPR compliance, NYDFS SEC, PCI, or any other compliance issue we are able perform client-specific assessment that marries strategy, risk management, investment, and risk-transfer decisions. These assessments are based on the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework and we use other detailed risk matrices to confirm that your policies, training programs, and security infrastructure complies with applicable regulations. Our assessments include:
Data Privacy
Our data privacy consultants assist our clients with the design and implementation of custom solutions needed to meet and exceed the requirements of best practice, ethical operations, and regulation. We work side by side with our client to creating repeatable strategic solutions for the management of data privacy. Furthermore, we work to identify gaps within existing privacy programs and design solutions to address those challenges. Lastly, we keep our clients up to date on data privacy trends like GDPR compliance.
Our privacy service offering includes but is not limited to the following:
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Maturity Assessments
- California Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CCPA) Priority Assessments
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Assessments
Maturity Assessment
Most organizations have information governance policies. Few can demonstrate that those policies are actually working. The gap between the two is where legal, regulatory, and operational exposure quietly accumulates.
Gemean’s GRC consulting and assessments team delivers a structured, evidence-based maturity assessment that identifies where the program stands, where the gaps are, and what improvements will have the greatest practical impact. We streamline the process with a refreshingly straightforward approach that is among the most cost-effective in the industry. A Global Colleague assessment takes weeks, not months, and does not disrupt employees’ work in the process.
Benefits of an Information Governance Maturity Assessment
- Fixed Price: Eliminates the fear of cost overruns and scope creep.
- Quick Turnaround: We complete your assessment in weeks, not months.
- Expertise: We have assessed the information governance maturity of some of the world’s largest organizations.
Legal Hold
A robust Legal Hold is the foundation of defensible electronic discovery, ensuring that all relevant data is preserved the moment litigation is anticipated. Failure to issue a timely and comprehensive hold—suspending all normal data deletion and destruction routines—exposes your organization to severe legal sanctions and costly penalties for spoliation. Our service integrates legal precision with IT expertise to create auditable, repeatable, and timely hold processes across your entire data landscape. By transforming your Legal Hold from a reactive scramble into a proactive component of your Information Governance, we protect your organization’s evidence and its reputation.
Legal Hold
Courts are sanctioning organizations for preservation failures more readily than ever. A legal hold issued late, scoped incorrectly, or inadequately documented is not a legal hold that will hold up.
Gemean’s managed legal hold service provides the people, processes, and technology to manage every aspect of the legal hold lifecycle, from identifying obligations and issuing notices through tracking acknowledgments, managing collection requests, and producing auditable status reports. Every process is recorded, repeatable, and defensible.
The Gemean Difference
- Knowledge: Our professionals are uniquely qualified to deliver highly skilled, cost-effective legal-hold services.
- Experience: We have helped some of the world’s largest corporations improve and manage their legal-hold processes.
- Technology: Our managed Legal Hold platform provides the fastest, most reliable way to effectively automate the legal-hold notification and compliance process.
Preservation
At Gemean, we know that data preservation is key to maintaining the integrity of your case. Our team knows how to help you collect data at a specific point in time and then preserve it in a manner prevents changes to the data. We support in the data collection process from acquisition to preservation to preparation for review.
Gemean provides highly qualified legal- support resources to support all aspects of your legal-hold process, including:
- Working with your legal team to determine all existing legal-hold obligations and recording them in legal-hold software.
- Creating, monitoring and updating matter and hold records on an ongoing basis.
- Assisting in-house and outside counsel with identifying records subject to a legal hold, and creating and managing collection requests.
- Monitoring legal-hold-notice acknowledgments and proactively following up with past-due recipients to ensure timely acknowledgment of receipt and understanding of legal hold notices.
- Preparing and distributing periodic legal-hold status reports to managing attorneys and other appropriate stakeholders. Assisting in-house and outside counsel with revising and reissuing legal-hold notices.
- Don’t get lost in the thicket of rules, regulations, and technical details surrounding data- preservation. Engage Gemean and let us provide you with the knowledge, experience, and resources needed to navigate today’s complex legal- hold landscape.
The Gemean Difference
- Knowledge: Our professionals are uniquely qualified to deliver highly skilled, cost-effective legal-hold services.
- Experience: We have helped some of the world’s largest corporations improve and manage their legal-hold processes.
- Technology: Our managed Legal Hold platform provides the fastest, most reliable way to effectively automate the legal-hold notification and compliance process.
Legal Hold
A robust Legal Hold is the foundation of defensible electronic discovery, ensuring that all relevant data is preserved the moment litigation is anticipated. Failure to issue a timely and comprehensive hold—suspending all normal data deletion and destruction routines—exposes your organization to severe legal sanctions and costly penalties for spoliation. Our service integrates legal precision with IT expertise to create auditable, repeatable, and timely hold processes across your entire data landscape. By transforming your Legal Hold from a reactive scramble into a proactive component of your Information Governance, we protect your organization’s evidence and its reputation.
Legal Hold Done Right
We provide people, processes, and tools for all aspects of the legal hold process.
Corporations are in the midst of a potential legal-hold perfect storm: stricter legal-preservation requirements and a greater willingness of courts to sanction companies who fail to properly preserve relevant records. This, combined with new technologies and increasing volumes of data, means far greater complexity.
Don’t be caught off guard.
Let experienced professionals provide expertise, knowledge, and resources to manage and improve your legal-hold management capabilities. From time-consuming data entry to issuing and tracking communications to managing critical deadlines, Gemean works with you to cost-effectively keep all
legal-hold processes on track.
Our team has extensive legal-hold knowledge and experience and we offer a secure, hosted legal-hold platform. We’re a proud partner of Legal Hold Pro, an on-demand software service that streamlines the practice of issuing legal holds.
Award-winning software is just the beginning of the Gemean difference. We use best practices that are recorded, repeatable, and defensible.
Our experienced professionals manage all the details, freeing your team to focus on their main responsibilities.
Gemean provides highly qualified legal- support resources to support all aspects of your legal-hold process, including:
- Working with your legal team to determine all existing legal-hold obligations and recording them in legal-hold software.
- Creating, monitoring and updating matter and hold records on an ongoing basis.
- Assisting in-house and outside counsel with identifying records subject to a legal hold, and creating and managing collection requests.
- Monitoring legal-hold-notice acknowledgments and proactively following up with past-due recipients to ensure timely acknowledgment of receipt and understanding of legal hold notices.
- Preparing and distributing periodic legal-hold status reports to managing attorneys and other appropriate stakeholders.
Assisting in-house and outside counsel with revising and reissuing legal-hold notices. - Don’t get lost in the thicket of rules, regulations, and technical details surrounding data- preservation. Engage Gemean and let us provide you with the knowledge, experience, and resources needed to navigate today’s complex legal- hold landscape.
The Gemean Difference
- Knowledge: Our professionals are uniquely qualified to deliver highly skilled, cost-effective legal-hold services.
- Experience: We have helped some of the world’s largest corporations improve and manage their legal-hold processes.
- Technology: Our managed Legal Hold platform provides the fastest, most reliable way to effectively automate the legal-hold notification and compliance process.
Preservation
Data preserved incorrectly is data that cannot be relied upon. Gemean’s governance risk and compliance consulting team supports the full preservation lifecycle, ensuring every collection is forensically sound and every step is documented.
Gemean provides:
- Forensic acquisition of data at a defined point in time, preventing alteration from the moment of collection.
- Chain of custody documentation maintained from acquisition through preparation for review.
- Preservation across cloud environments, enterprise systems, mobile devices, and legacy platforms.
- Integration with legal hold management to ensure preservation obligations are met immediately when a hold is triggered.
Compliance
A compliance program that exists on paper is not the same as one that functions under pressure. Gemean’s GRC consulting and assessments professionals design and implement programs built around how each organization actually operates, not a generic template.
Gemean’s experts provide:
- Governance risk and compliance advisory across industries, sizes, and organizational types
- Integration of GRC consultation principles directly into enterprise systems and operations
- Internal controls consulting designed to identify compliance lapses before they become regulatory findings
- Tailored governance risk consulting solutions that reflect each organization's unique processes and risk profile
- Ongoing monitoring and program improvement as the regulatory environment evolves
Crypto Regulatory Environment
Crypto enforcement is accelerating. Virtual asset service providers and their executives face sweeping regulatory action, and the gaps in global AML and counter-terrorism financing frameworks are being exploited faster than most compliance programs can respond.
Gemean’s GRC advisory services team brings AML and counter-financing of terrorism expertise across the full spectrum of virtual asset activity, supported by blockchain consulting and governance risk and compliance advisory capabilities:
- Crypto to fiat
- Crypto to crypto
- Custodians
- Initial Coin Offering
- Exchanges
- Wallets
- Privacy Coins
- Smart contracts
US regulators including CFTC, FinCEN, SEC, and the NY BitLicense framework are among the most active enforcers globally. Gemean helps organizations stay ahead of them.
Audits & Monitoring
A compliance program that is never tested is a program that cannot be trusted. Gemean’s GRC consulting and assessments professionals provide the technical depth and regulatory perspective needed to confirm that controls are functioning as designed, not just documented.
Gemean assists clients with:
- Reviewing the design, implementation, and improvement of internal audit controls and compliance infrastructure
- Monitoring issues reported within compliance program policies, processes, and systems
- Conducting periodic audits of the effectiveness of internal control services and compliance practices
- Assisting clients in understanding, navigating, and responding to regulatory inquiries
Internal Investigations & Remediation
How an organization investigates a compliance issue is as consequential as what it finds. A poorly structured investigation creates as many problems as it solves.
Gemean’s GRC advisory services and forensic accounting consultants advise clients on structuring and managing internal investigations to produce defensible, effective outcomes.
Gemean provides:
- Management and oversight of forensic accounting and investigation and internal investigation processes
- Support in responding to regulators and government inquiries
- Forensic accounting audit and investigation in support of internal and external matters
- Issue remediation recommendations tied directly to root cause
- Assistance preparing issues for both voluntary and mandatory disclosure
Risk Management & Assessments
Effective compliance programs are built on an accurate understanding of the risks they are designed to address. Internal controls that are poorly designed or inconsistently applied create the conditions for fraud, misstatement, and regulatory exposure.
Gemean’s GRC consulting and assessments practice evaluates compliance risk across the organization’s full operational footprint.
We assist our clients with:
- Internal controls consulting across financial, operational, and compliance dimensions
- Internal audit controls assessment identifying both design and operating deficiencies
- Fraud risk evaluation tied to the organization's specific processes and vulnerabilities
- Internal control services recommendations ranked by practical significance and remediation priority
- Ongoing monitoring to verify that controls are functioning as designed
Third-Party Oversight
An organization’s compliance obligations do not stop at its own boundaries. The actions of agents, partners, vendors, and intermediaries directly affect legal liability, operational integrity, and brand reputation.
Gemean’s governance risk and compliance advisory team assists clients in reviewing, designing, and overseeing third-party compliance programs that reflect the actual risk profile of each relationship.
Gemean’s services include:
- Assessment of regulatory and operational risk from third-party business relationships
- Anti-corruption compliance and anti-bribery and corruption program design for vendor ecosystems
- Vendor and supplier code of conduct review and implementation
- Third-party risk mitigation strategy design
- Issue remediation recommendations and mandatory disclosure support
Information Governance
Most companies embrace the benefits of “big” or structured data and the related business intelligence it delivers. But with big data comes big responsibility for managing immediate and future legal and regulatory risk. Information governance goes beyond retention and disposition to include privacy, access controls, and other compliance issues.
Archive
Archive your data in a cloud-based environment
GDPR & Privacy Matters
Navigate the regulations surrounding data privacy.
Information Governance Maturity Assessment
Build a roadmap for improving effectiveness and efficiency and mitigating risks.
Legal Hold
We provide people, processes, and tools for all aspects of the legal hold process.
Preservation
Collect and protect your data to maintain data integrity for your case.
Archive
Archive your data in a cloud-based environment
GDPR & Privacy Matters
Navigate the regulations surrounding data privacy.
Information Governance Maturity Assessment
Build a roadmap for improving effectiveness and efficiency and mitigating risks.
Legal Hold
We provide people, processes, and tools for all aspects of the legal hold process.
Preservation
Collect and protect your data to maintain data integrity for your case.
Call Us Today to Schedule a Free Consultation
Call Us Today to Schedule a Free Consultation
FAQs
What is governance, risk and compliance consulting and why does an organization need it?
Governance risk and compliance consulting, commonly referred to as GRC consultation or governance risk and compliance consulting, helps organizations build the internal frameworks, controls, and processes needed to manage legal, regulatory, and operational risk systematically. Without a structured governance risk consulting program, organizations are exposed to regulatory sanctions, financial penalties, reputational damage, and operational failures that could have been identified and mitigated in advance. Gemean’s GRC advisory services are built around the specific regulatory environment and operational profile of each client, not a generic template.
What does Gemean's GRC consultation service cover?
Gemean’s governance risk and compliance consulting service covers information governance, legal hold management and preservation, GDPR and data privacy compliance, information governance maturity assessments, internal controls consulting, internal investigations and remediation, crypto regulatory compliance, audits and monitoring, risk management and assessments, and third-party oversight. Each GRC consultation engagement is tailored to the specific regulatory landscape and operational profile of the client organization. Gemean’s GRC consulting and assessments practice draws on forensic, legal, and data analytics expertise to deliver programs that function under real-world pressure, not just on paper.
What does legal hold mean in the context of GRC?
A legal hold is a formal directive issued by an organization’s legal team that suspends normal data deletion and destruction routines to preserve information that may be relevant to anticipated or active litigation, regulatory inquiry, or investigation. What does legal hold mean within a governance risk and compliance framework? It means connecting legal obligations directly to IT systems, records management, and compliance operations in a way that is documented, repeatable, and defensible. Failure to execute a defensible legal hold can result in court sanctions, adverse rulings, and significant financial exposure.
What is legal hold in cybersecurity and how does it intersect with GRC?
Legal hold in cybersecurity refers to the obligation to preserve digital evidence, system logs, access records, and other electronically stored information relevant to a cybersecurity incident that may lead to litigation or regulatory investigation. What is legal hold in cybersecurity in practice? It means ensuring that incident data, breach records, forensic images, and communication logs are protected from alteration or deletion the moment an organization anticipates legal or regulatory scrutiny. Gemean addresses legal hold cyber security obligations as part of its integrated GRC consulting and assessments and e-discovery cyber security service offering, ensuring that preservation requirements are met from the first hour of an incident response.
Does Gemean provide evidence tracking and evidence tracker capabilities as part of its legal hold service?
Yes. Defensible legal hold management requires robust evidence tracking at every stage. Gemean uses its managed legal hold platform, in partnership with Legal Hold Pro, to provide comprehensive evidence tracker functionality: logging hold issuance, custodian acknowledgments, collection requests, and escalations in a fully auditable record. This evidence tracker infrastructure ensures that every preservation action is documented, repeatable, and defensible if challenged in court. For organizations evaluating LHP alternatives, Legal Hold Pro alternatives, or Exterro alternatives with stronger evidence tracker capability, Gemean’s managed legal hold service provides a complete, attorney-led solution.
How does Gemean approach GDPR and data privacy as part of its risk and compliance consulting (GRC)?
Gemean’s privacy consultants assist clients with the design and implementation of custom data privacy solutions tailored to their specific regulatory obligations. This includes GDPR Maturity Assessments, CCPA Priority Assessments, and HIPAA Assessments. The firm works alongside clients to identify gaps in existing privacy programs, build repeatable compliance processes, and stay current with evolving data privacy regulations as part of a broader governance risk and compliance consulting engagement. Gemean’s GRC advisory services ensure that privacy program design is aligned with the organization’s full regulatory footprint, not just the most visible requirement.
What industries does Gemean's governance risk consulting team serve?
Gemean’s GRC consultation team serves financial services firms, healthcare organizations, technology companies, government agencies, regulated industries subject to NYDFS, SEC, PCI, HIPAA, and GDPR requirements, and organizations operating in the crypto and virtual assets space requiring blockchain consulting and regulatory compliance support. The firm’s interdisciplinary team brings governance risk consulting expertise together with forensic accounting consultants, digital forensics consultants, and data analytics capabilities to deliver practical, integrated governance risk and compliance advisory solutions across industries and jurisdictions.
What is legal hold in cybersecurity?
Legal hold in cybersecurity is the obligation to preserve digital evidence generated during and after a cybersecurity incident, including system logs, network records, endpoint forensic images, and incident response communications, when the organization anticipates legal or regulatory action. Legal hold cyber security obligations arise at the same moment as in any other litigation context, when litigation is reasonably anticipated, and apply to every data source that may contain relevant evidence of the breach, its scope, and its impact.