Hanzo

Typical implementation process for the Hanzo platform, based on standard enterprise software deployment practices and what Hanzo has shared publicly:

1. Discovery & Requirements Gathering

Hanzo’s team collaborates with your legal, compliance, and IT stakeholders to understand your organization’s data landscape, legal workflows, and compliance obligations. This includes identifying which platforms (e.g., Slack, Teams, Google Workspace) need to be integrated and what types of data need to be preserved.

Estimated time: 1–2 weeks

2. Solution Design & Scoping

Based on the discovery phase, Hanzo designs a tailored implementation plan. This includes defining data sources, access permissions, legal hold policies, and any custom workflows or reporting needs.

Estimated time: 1 week

3. Platform Configuration & Integration

Hanzo’s technical team configures the platform and integrates it with your collaboration tools and cloud environments. This may involve setting up secure API connections, user roles, and data retention rules.

Estimated time: 2–4 weeks (depending on complexity and number of systems)

4. Data Mapping & Validation

Using Hanzo’s Dynamic Mapping technology, the system identifies and scopes relevant data for preservation. This step ensures that only necessary data is collected, reducing noise and storage costs.

Estimated time: 1 week

5. Testing & Quality Assurance

Before going live, the system undergoes rigorous testing to ensure data is being captured accurately and workflows are functioning as expected. Legal and IT teams validate the setup.

Estimated time: 1 week

6. Training & Onboarding

Hanzo provides training sessions for legal, compliance, and IT teams. This includes hands-on guidance on using features like legal holds, early case assessment, and Spotlight AI for data review.

Estimated time: 1 week

7. Go-Live & Support

Once everything is validated, the platform goes live. Hanzo offers ongoing support, including access to customer success managers and technical support for troubleshooting or scaling.

Estimated time: Immediately after onboarding

Total Estimated Implementation Time: 6–10 weeks

This timeline can vary depending on the size of the organization, the number of data sources, and the level of customization required.

Hanzo can be customized to fit specific business needs, and this flexibility is one of its key strengths, especially for enterprises with complex legal, compliance, or data governance requirements. Here are several data points and examples that illustrate how Hanzo supports customization:

1. Custom Data Scoping and Preservation

Hanzo uses Dynamic Mapping to allow organizations to define exactly what data should be preserved from platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Workspace. This means you can tailor data collection to specific users, channels, timeframes, or keywords, ensuring relevance and reducing unnecessary data volume.

2. Configurable Legal Hold Workflows

Hanzo supports custom legal hold workflows, allowing legal teams to define how holds are issued, tracked, and released. You can customize notifications, custodians, and escalation paths to align with your internal legal processes.

3. AI Customization with Spotlight AI

Spotlight AI, Hanzo’s AI engine, can be tuned to prioritize certain types of content based on your legal strategy. For example, it can be trained to recognize specific risk indicators, sensitive data types (like PII or IP), or communication patterns relevant to your industry or case type.

4. Custom Metadata and Tagging

Hanzo allows for custom metadata fields and tagging, which is essential for organizing and filtering data during review. You can define tags for case-specific issues, privilege flags, or regulatory categories, making it easier to manage large datasets.

5. Integration with Internal Systems

Hanzo can be integrated with your existing identity management systems (e.g., Okta, Azure AD), case management tools, or document repositories. This ensures seamless data flow and user access control across platforms.

6. Custom Reporting and Exports

The platform supports custom reporting templates and export formats, allowing you to generate reports that meet internal audit, legal, or regulatory standards. You can also schedule reports or automate exports for recurring compliance needs.

7. Role-Based Access Control

Hanzo offers granular user permissions, so you can define who can access what data, perform reviews, or manage holds, tailored to your organizational hierarchy and security policies.

8. Industry-Specific Use Cases

Hanzo has been adapted for use in industries like finance, healthcare, government, and tech, each with unique compliance and data handling needs. For example, a healthcare provider might configure Hanzo to flag HIPAA-sensitive content, while a financial institution might focus on FINRA or SEC compliance.

9. Single-Tenant SaaS Deployment

For organizations with strict data residency or security requirements, Hanzo offers single-tenant SaaS environments, which can be configured to meet specific IT and compliance standards.

Hanzo follows a custom pricing model, and while exact figures are not publicly disclosed, here’s what is typically involved:

• Setup Fees: Hanzo may charge an initial setup or onboarding fee depending on the complexity of your environment (e.g., number of integrations, data volume, and custom workflows). This is common in enterprise SaaS deployments.

• Maintenance Costs: Ongoing maintenance is generally included in the subscription, especially since Hanzo is delivered as a single-tenant SaaS platform. This means updates, patches, and infrastructure management are handled by Hanzo.

• Support Charges: Standard support is likely bundled into the subscription, but premium support tiers (e.g., 24/7 access, dedicated account managers, or faster SLAs) may come at an additional cost. These are typically negotiated during the sales process.

Hanzo offers a comprehensive onboarding and training program to ensure smooth adoption:

• Live Training Sessions: Conducted during implementation to walk legal, compliance, and IT teams through the platform’s features.

• Role-Based Training: Tailored sessions for different user roles—e.g., legal reviewers, IT admins, compliance officers.

• Documentation and Help Center: Access to guides, FAQs, and best practices.

• Customer Success Managers: Assigned to enterprise clients to ensure long-term success and platform optimization.

• Ongoing Support: Includes technical troubleshooting, feature guidance, and workflow optimization.

This structured approach helps teams quickly become proficient in using tools like Spotlight AI, legal holds, and data preservation workflows.

Hanzo places a strong emphasis on data security, especially given the sensitive nature of legal and compliance data. Key security features include:

• Single-Tenant SaaS Architecture: Each customer operates in a dedicated, isolated environment, reducing the risk of data leakage or cross-contamination

• Walled Garden Approach: Data remains within a secure, closed ecosystem while hosted by Hanzo, ensuring it doesn’t leave the customer’s environment unless explicitly exported

• Encryption: Data is encrypted both in transit and at rest, using enterprise-grade protocols.

• Access Controls: Role-based access and authentication mechanisms (likely including SSO and MFA) to ensure only authorized users can access sensitive data.

• Audit Trails: Comprehensive logging of user actions for accountability and compliance.

• Compliance Standards: Hanzo is designed to support regulatory frameworks like GDPR, HIPAA, FOIA, and others, depending on the client’s industry.

• Updates are managed by Hanzo’s team, minimizing disruption to your operations.

• Clients benefit from continuous improvements, including security patches, performance enhancements, and new features, especially in AI and data discovery.

• Because each client operates in an isolated environment, updates can be scheduled or staged based on organizational needs and risk tolerance.

This approach ensures that updates are both frequent and flexible, tailored to enterprise-grade reliability and uptime expectations.

Hanzo emphasizes data control and transparency, especially for legal and compliance-sensitive environments. While the full terms are typically outlined in client contracts, here’s what’s generally understood:

• Data Ownership: Clients retain full ownership of their data. Hanzo acts as a processor or custodian, not a controller.

• Data Portability: Hanzo supports custom export formats and metadata tagging, allowing organizations to extract their data in a structured, usable format. This is critical for legal handoffs, audits, or transitioning to other platforms.

• Walled Garden Architecture: Data remains within a secure, isolated environment unless explicitly exported by the client, reinforcing ownership and control

Hanzo is built for enterprise scalability, and its platform—especially Hanzo Illuminate—is designed to handle:

• Hundreds of thousands of Slack channels
• Millions of custodians

• Billions of messages

This scalability is not just technical—it’s also contractual and operational:

• Scaling Up: As your data volume or user base grows, Hanzo can expand capacity, integrations, and AI processing power. This is typically handled through contract amendments or tiered pricing.
• Scaling Down: If your needs decrease (e.g., post-litigation or restructuring), Hanzo can adjust service levels accordingly. This flexibility is often built into enterprise agreements, though specifics depend on your contract.
• Dynamic Mapping: Hanzo’s proprietary technology allows you to target only the data you need, reducing unnecessary storage and review costs as your needs evolve.

• Contract Duration: Hanzo typically operates on annual or multi-year contracts, especially for enterprise clients.

• Renewal Terms: Contracts may auto-renew unless notice is given within a specified period (commonly 30–90 days before the renewal date). This allows continuity of service unless the client opts out.

• Cancellation Policy: Early termination may be possible but could involve cancellation fees or require payment for the remainder of the contract term, depending on the agreement.

• Scaling Terms: Clients can scale up by adding more users, data sources, or storage capacity, often through a contract amendment. Scaling down may be restricted until the next renewal cycle unless otherwise negotiated.

• Custom Terms: Hanzo is known for working closely with enterprise clients, so custom contract terms—including flexible renewal or exit clauses—may be available upon request.

Hanzo is designed to support a wide range of regulatory and industry compliance standards, making it suitable for legal, healthcare, financial, and government use cases. Key compliance capabilities include:

• GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation): Hanzo supports data subject access requests (DSARs), right to be forgotten, and data minimization through targeted data collection and anonymization

• CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act): Enables accurate and timely responses to consumer data requests.

• HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act): For healthcare clients, Hanzo ensures secure handling of protected health information (PHI).

• FOIA (Freedom of Information Act): Supports government agencies in managing and responding to public records requests

• SEC & FINRA: Hanzo’s archiving and data preservation tools help financial institutions meet regulatory audit and retention requirements

• ISO-Compliant WARC Archiving: Ensures that dynamic website content is preserved in a format that meets international standards for long-term digital preservation

• WORM (Write Once, Read Many) Storage: Ensures that archived data cannot be altered, supporting defensibility in audits and litigation

These standards are supported through features like automated legal holds, AI-powered data filtering, secure exports, and audit-ready reporting.