Epiq Global, an international e-discovery and managed services company, has taken its systems offline globally after detecting unauthorized activity.

Epiq made the move on Saturday as part of its data security response plan and has brought on a third-party forensics firm to conduct an investigation.

A company spokesperson provided the following statement:

“On February 29, we detected unauthorized activity on our systems. As part of our comprehensive response plan, we immediately took our systems offline globally to contain the threat and began working with a third-party forensic firm to conduct an independent investigation.

“Our technical team is working closely with world class third-party experts to address this matter and bring our systems back online in a secure manner as quickly as possible.

“As always, protecting client and employee information is a critical priority for the company. Epiq has followed industry best practices in encrypting and protecting all data. At this time there is no evidence of any unauthorized transfer or misuse or exfiltration of any data in our possession.”

Among the systems taken offline are Epiq’s instances of the Relativity e-discovery software, leaving customers unable to work on review projects they have underway.

(Note: This is not an outage that affected Relativity directly in any way.)

One customer expressed frustration over the situation, saying they are facing both court- and client-driven deadlines, but are unable to reach their data and have review staff sitting idle.

A spokesperson said it will be days, not hours, before systems are restored.

Yesterday, Epiq’s home page showed no images, but only a message that the site was undergoing maintenance. (See image above.) Today, the site has an image and the message, “Our corporate web site is offline to perform maintenance.”