Email Archiving 101 – What Happens After an Email Is Read?

August 11th, 2010 by No comments »

Have you ever wondered what happens to your email after it is read? Hate to keep email in your inbox but still need it to consult later on? Email backups are becoming more and more common. Gmail has it enabled as one of their default features for every single account. Other web email services and email hosts are starting to bring in the ability to archive the email for later viewing.

Email archiving is equivalent to search for your email. Users select which messages they wish to archive, archive them and can consult them at any time down the road. They may remain in the inbox or may be moved to another folder. Best of all, archived messages can be set up as threads on some email providers. This way, users will be able to tell whether someone has emailed them in the past in regards to this topic as well as what date they emailed them and what the message was. Email archival is especially important to power email users such as corporate customers. They have been known to search for a clients email and find it within seconds instead of minutes.

Email archiving used to be considered a special feature and many software developers wanted to charge extra for it. Now, most email providers offer some type of search feature for free. Email archiving software was tested among individuals in the workplace. It was found that employees at a major accounting company who had email archiving software were more efficient than employees who did not. The difference was staggering, at over 20% efficiency increased among the email archiving employees.

Email archiving is a feature that takes some getting used to. Not every employee will want to adapt right away and some may find it difficult to use. There are thousands of different programs that let employees search through their archives. Many of these programs, especially Google Apps for business, take it to the next level. They have short cuts which allow business users to put labels on certain conversations that pertain to a certain month or job. They also allow users to search in different folders. Whether the email is categorized incorrectly or placed correctly, it does not matter. Emails can be searched for by using the email address, name, subject line or even keywords. Some programs allow you to go a step further and suggest as you are typing.

Email archiving is the way of the future. People are able to be more efficient as well as categorize work. The work load per employee is able to be increased while decreasing the amount of time spent on an excellent customer response. Email archiving software also proves useful to solve disputes as well as keep records of what orders were placed and when they were placed. The archiving software does not solve all the problems in the world but archiving software is able to help businesses with tons of problems. Take care of your email addresses by using a web mail provider who has email archiving enabled.

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Archiving Email. Why?

July 21st, 2010 by No comments »

Business uses email for the vast majority of its communications, it’s quicker, more convenient and more productive than any other form of communication across geographical distance that we have. Because of this, there is a whole range of legislation that compels business to conduct this communication safely and securely. With than in mind, having a complete and compliant email archiving solution is essential to prevent data loss and litigation being brought against the company.

Archiving email used to be restricted to forward thinking companies that had an eye on disaster recovery. With the advent of this legislation and events like 9/11, every company who operated in the United States has to treat email very seriously indeed. Having a coherent email archive is the first step towards making a business secure and to prepare it for any eventuality. Email is so prevalent, that many organizations could cease to trade if their email system went down. Having an email archiving system that is available 24/7 and during disaster situations is worth the considerable trouble and expense involved in putting one together.

Couple that need with the need to comply with legislation such as the SEC, FINRA, HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, NYSE and NASD rules and you have a compelling case to have an email archiving solution in place before you open your doors for business. All these organizations have reams of regulations regarding the use and storage of electronic company information. The regulations are complex and cover just about everything from how they are written, read, managed, sent, received and stored.

Most rules pertain to security of the information. Using secure systems, having adequate building security, ensuring staff cannot abuse their position. Having a secure email archiving infrastructure in place and other such considerations. Many of the entities mentioned have rules about retaining emails for specific periods of time. For example the SEC and FINRA requires email to be stored for up to 6 years. They must be stored in their original form, be secure, tamperproof, non-erasable or rewritable and must also have copies stored at a geographically diverse location. SOX, or Sarbanes-Oxley dictates that relevant emails must be stored securely to 5 years, especially financial information.

All these laws have a similar look and feel, but cover different industries and types of information. One thread flows through all of them though, they are more concerned about how email and information is handled rather than the contents of them. It’s how this information is created, transmitted, read and then stored that companies have to bear in mind. Email archiving is just a small piece of this giant jigsaw, but the one piece that gets the most publicity.

Archiving email is a practice that many organizations did anyway, but on a much smaller scale. They are now compelled to use email archives to comply with the law, as well as protect themselves from disasters. Having a complete and coherent email archive is the best way a company can protect itself from abuse and litigation as email if often used in evidence. So it isn’t all about protecting yourself from the lawmakers, it’s about protecting yourself from everyone.

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Windows 7

June 14th, 2010 by No comments »

With Windows7, you can maintain your programs and files in order and can ensure that there is a proper order and discipline in your file maintenance.  You can easily create movies and upload them to YouTube in few minutes and apart from this you can create great looking movies and slideshows. Management of windows is much easier and you can resize and can rearrange it, cascade it simply by dragging their borders.  Connecting with the networks is much easier here and another benefit is you there is a facility of wireless network. Windows search enables you to find quickly what you are looking for and the search is also very simple and very easy to find a specific file, email or a program.  PC responds very quickly with its features and facilities.  Sharing files, folders, printers among multiple PCs is very easy and it is also very easy to share music, photos and other entertainment accessories.  Further it also offers  a better protection for PC and there is endless entertainment to watch videos, movies, photos and music.

Ever since Windows launched its several editions, there has been a continuous success to its credit and there is a swam pool of several successful editions which has highlighted the Microsoft products and now with the emergence of Windows 7, there is expected much more efficiency from the product. Customers of Windows are very happy with its working and in fact there is no other best alternative or best operating system that matches with Windows in all respects. Although other operating systems are also efficient, the flexibility and reliability of Windows is much more as compared to other operating systems.

With its great credibility and reliability, it can be stated that Windows 7 is an advanced version of all its previous editions and enhances the work and efficiency of operating system. As PC users have been multiplying every year all over the world, rapid development in technology helps users to draw more benefits and advantage from its products and this is very good for those who wish to have quick working and quick results.  It is true that the features of Windows 7 such as Live Taskbar Groups, Home Group, Snap, Pin and Windows search are of great benefit and advantage to the users. Windows 7 has unique and advanced features of an operating system. The benefits and advantages are more apart from its extended features for the usability of users.

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Exchange 2010 Licensing and pricing

March 16th, 2010 by No comments »

For any important licensed product, there will be many restrictions on its purchase and Microsoft products are also in the same line that it requires licensing and pricing to purchase Microsoft products. Exchange Server 2010 offers three types of licenses which are server licenses, client access licenses and external connector licenses. Licenses are authorized certificates to use Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and this is very essential as using without permission will not yield good results and it also amounts to violation of copyrights. Therefore, Microsoft has offered licensing which permits customers to select a suitable type of license and gain benefit from ME 2010.

The IT market is already filled with lot of stuff that are purchased and used without license and customers cannot ask for any service or for an updation if purchased without license. This also indicates that customers have to lose their investments for purchasing products without license. Further license indicates legality and confirmation to use products under certain working environment which is acceptable to the Microsoft company. This is very important because of the fact that multinational companies use lot of equipment in researching a product and the assurance of quality with guarantee is made available only with the software giants which have high technology at its front to bring best products to the market.  Therefore practicing license formalities is very essential and it must strictly practiced by customers who wish to purchase Microsoft products.

Pricing is made suitably according to the technology used in development of a product and since this product is manufactured in United States and price is in U.S. dollars.  For instance there are several editions in Microsoft servers and each edition is differently priced and therefore, it is important to check each price and take it on note before purchasing it.   It is true that Microsoft products are highly priced and they are not definitely within the range of a middle income group level and therefore, corporate sector, industrial sector can derive huge benefit for setting up its IT department by installing ME 2010 in their office. Companies can definitely afford high prices as the investments for business will definitely be on a large scale.   So, in this pattern, Microsoft ensures that licensing and prices are both are followed by customers when a purchase has to be made from its web site.  It is also a fact that because of its professional working methods, Microsoft giant has become a very successful leader in leading the world.

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Exchange 2010 Features and benefits

March 16th, 2010 by No comments »

Microsoft Exchange feature details are Mail box databases, Role based access and control, transport resiliency, remote power shell, online move mailbox, web-based administration, mail-box resiliency,  and there are many other features in Microsoft Exchange 2010. Some of the prerequisites of Exchange 2010 server are it is important to purchase Windows Server 2008 license. The edition of Windows Server that is required by the business or company, also depends on the features of Exchange Server 2010, which will be used in the offices.  For instance, Exchange 2010 servers that use Mailbox Resiliency features for high availability, they have to use either Windows Server 2008 or Data Center editions for its clustering features and for all other Exchange 2010 scenarios, Windows Server Standard stands good.

Therefore with the above features and benefits, the efficiency of Microsoft company products and also the working efficiency of Microsoft Exchange 2010 is also revealed for the benefit of customers. Customers can always make an assessment about the product and can take huge benefit and advantage from the products of Microsoft and can deliver quality work to the clients and customers.

With technology growing at a fast pace, it has become very important that businesses have to increase their volume of work quickly and efficiently and in this mode of working method, access to fast paced technology has become much necessary and software products as they have been helping many upcoming businesses to help its volume of business and growth, Microsoft products are enhancing to the quality of work and also working towards growth and prosperity of thousands of small and medium businesses around the world.  In fact Microsoft has been working towards the growth and development of small and medium businesses.  In this method of work, Microsoft Exchange has been an outstanding product in giving the best output through its performance.

For the future and for the present, Microsoft company will continue to do its research in giving the best products and to help business community to take huge advantage from its performance.  This is also in the interest of global technology companies which are working very hard to give the best to the entire business community.  Some of the important points to be noted here is that, many of consumers may not be aware of the new products of Microsoft company and it is important to advertise and campaign about the latest products of Microsoft company through mass media such as Internet and television.

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Unified Messaging or Voicemail – A new attraction in Exchange 2010

March 8th, 2010 by No comments »


Voicemail was added as a core component to Exchange 2007 with its release, but there were not many organizations that chose to implement Exchange 2007Voicemail. With the release of Exchange 2010, more Unified Messaging servers are being implemented, the reason being that core features are included in the Exchange update.

In terms of technology, the voicemail of Exchange 2010 provides all the capabilities as any of the voicemail systems in the market. Thus the Exchange 2010 is ‘as good’ in technology as anybody else in the market. However there are a couple of reasons which make Exchange 2010 Voicemail stand ahead of all others and why organizations are implementing it:

  • Conversion of Voice to Text: a new polished feature of Exchange 2010 where your voice messages are automatically converted to text and saved with the voice message in the form of text. So if you receive an attachment containing a voice message, you also get its transcription in text with it. This feature is extremely useful when you are out, you will not have to give back a call to the voice mail system for listening to your voicemail and you can just read the text message present along with it.
  • Redundancy in Voicemail: another reason being that exchange mailbox is being followed for the user by Exchange Unified Messaging Server. There are new Database Availability Groups with the new Exchange and an organization can maintain up to sixteen copies of mailbox of a user for the purpose of fault tolerance and high availability. There is a need thus for voicemail system to know the location of the mailbox. Exchange 2010 does provide this facility whereas a lot of third party voicemails do not.

Thus with having all the similar features as of any voicemail system and the above two added advantages, the Exchange 2010 voicemail is getting increasingly popular.

Following are the steps to install Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging. :

First you have to install the Unified Messaging Role-

  • Go to control panel
  • Select Programs and Features
  • Select Microsoft Exchange Server 2010.
  • Click on the Change button
  • Enter Exchange Maintenance mode.
  • Click Next.
  • Select the check box stating Unified Messaging Role
  • Click Next.
  • Readiness checks are performed by installer.
  • Click on the Install button
  • Unified Messaging server role will get installed.
  • After the successful completion of installation, click Finish.

After the installation of Unified Messaging Server Role, complete the following post-install configuration jobs for basic installation:

  • Form a UM dial plan.
  • Associate with it subscriber access numbers.
  • Create a gateway of UM IP.
  • Associate the dial plan with the UM server.
  • Form a UM Auto Attendant.
  • Form the hunt groups.
  • Enable the mailboxes for UM.
  • Test the functionality.

The new feature is definitely worth working with and getting familiar with.

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Database Corruption While Replication of Public folders

March 8th, 2010 by No comments »


While talking about Microsoft Exchange Server, it’s like a mandate to mention the public folders. The public folders contain user data as well as information critical to the system. The system information is needed for the swift operation of Exchange Server in the environment. Replication of the public folders is done in order to have better performance and effective and easy management of application.

Two types of replication are there: hierarchy replication and content replication. In some cases, replication of the public folders between the Microsoft Exchange Servers becomes troublesome. Replication may cause some inconsistencies in the database and render it inaccessible. These inconsistencies may cause severe data loss and may lead to database corruption while replication of public folders. Thus, need may arise for Exchange Repair using tools.

Practically, when public folder replication request is sent by a system running Microsoft Exchange Server, email scanning might also occur. Messaging Database may also get corrupted at the same time and you may encounter the following error message displayed on your screen:

“Multiple edits have been made. The conflicting edits have been attached to the conflict message.”

At this time, the public folders of the server may get inconsistent and inaccessible. It may lead to critical data loss and database corruption. The job of Exchange Server Administrator is to find out the cause of the problem and go about solving it.

Root cause of the Problem:

There may be cases that a database transaction is written inappropriately and there is an error. This can lead to an imbalanced Exchanged Server transaction state. If virus scanning is enabled, then imbalanced transaction state may promote virus scanning to be done on outbound replication emails. Database may also get corrupted due to imbalanced state of database transaction.

Resolution of the Problem:

To resolve these problems, a hot fix is provided by Microsoft on its website and is downloadable from there. After the installation of the hot fix, database integrity should always be checked by Isinteg.exe utility. The hot fix can solve the problem and the problem will not occur in the future. As far as damaged database is concerned, hot fix can’t repair it. Exchange Recovery is required for repairing and restoring the corrupted database.

There is an affective and advanced third party application available to resolve the problem, called Exchange Database Repair tools. An extensive scanning of corrupted Exchange Server is carried out by this software. The software restores all of the server’s objects intact. The software is equipped with easy graphical user and interactive interface, thus there is no need for prior and sound technical skills and you can save yourself from database corruption while replication of public folders.

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Exchange 2010 Transport Protection Rules

February 1st, 2010 by No comments »

One of the most important improvements in Exchange 2010 in my opinion is the new toolkit that allows administrators to implement policies that works with Outlook 2010 and Outlook Web Access too. The fact is offers many different tools that make Email Hosting better and easier to manage.

This is a significant step forward, as previously OWA was something of a unsubtle beast. You could either restrict access to mailboxes altogether or it was open season on emails. Now policies can be enforced across the board, whatever client the users prefer.

The Transport Protection Rules enable Exchange administrators to create rules that control every aspect of email, from content restrictions, size, approved recipients for sensitive emails, no copy and pasting and other neat tricks. While most of these features have been around in other incarnations, they have never been so easy to implement or ever worked with Outlook Web Access. The TPR system is new to Exchange 2010 and a welcome addition to the platform.

In a real life example of the TPR in action, say a project manager send a detailed email to his team listing a new product, it’s benefits, features and proposed release date. He can mark he email confidential so his people knew not to share it, which has always been the case. The mail would have a flag on it marking it as confidential.

Now, with Transport Protection Rules, Exchange can enforce a policy on confidential emails that includes not being able to forward them, copy and paste to or from them and other niceties. This means if someone absent mindedly forwarded it as part of a conversation the Exchange server would refuse. This is a significant step forward in information security, and allows administrators to control the flow of information with much more granularity than before.

Drilling deeper into the Transport Protection Rules, it’s also possible to restrict emails, by email address, location, recipient, whether it’s internal or external and a raft of other criteria. It also works seamlessly with Outlook Web Access too. Which is handy because Office 2010 doesn’t even have a release date yet.

The biggest bonus with these rules, and the closer integration with OWA is that everything will work with browsers other than Internet Explorer. No more will you need plugins to be able to enforce rules, or add functionality. Everything works out of the box, so Opera, Firefox or Safari users will also have full access to the available features, and also be subject to the Transport Protection Rules.

The Exchange 2010 was the largest beta Microsoft have ever run. From where I’m sitting, it was worth every minute. They have listened to feedback and integrated many of the improvements into the new system. While it’s still a big, cumbersome beast, it’s now a bit more manageable at least.

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Data Leak Prevention

November 20th, 2009 by No comments »

A great deal of time and money is spent protecting organizations from electronic threats from the outside. Firewalls, anti-virus, DMZ’s and so on. Increasingly businesses are also having to turn their attention inwards and look at data leak prevention from the inside.

Despite the many safeguards in place, many organizations electronic communication and file systems are largely unmonitored. That means there is an ever-present threat of data loss either by accident or on purpose. Losing customer data as we often see in the media is an embarrassing and expensive thing. It can lead to loss of business, reputation and even large fines. Given the strict regulatory frameworks business works in, data loss prevention should be a top priority.

Data loss can be anything from employees knowingly sharing confidential data with competitors, accidentally sharing it, losing the information, or infrastructure failures that cause data loss. With all the avenues available for an organization to lose confidential or important data either on purpose or accident, it is as important as any other area of corporate security to address.

There are three areas of data leak prevention that needs addressing in any process.

  • Data in motion – Any information that is moving through the company network, including email, files transfers and the internet.
  • Data at rest – Information in the form of emails, files, databases and such that is static, or stored.
  • Data at the endpoint – Endpoints are client computers, work laptops, USB storage and other movable, mobile devices.

An effective data protection program will analyze each one of these and come up with a strategy to address them.

Just about everything the modern business does is electronic. Communication is mainly by email, files are stored electronically, and even phone calls are now going VoIP. The potential for loss is huge, and it should not be underestimated that the main cause of data leakage is through accident, not by design.

The main data leak prevention method is to take regular backups of all stored data. They can either be incremental during or at the end of the day, or complete backups at the end of the week. The same for email archiving, which is separate to backups. Email archives are necessary not only to protect against data loss but to ensure compliance.

Data in motion can be secured by having traffic monitors put on the business network that sniffs all traffic for potentially damaging information being communicated where it shouldn’t be. They can flag suspicious emails, file transfers and the like if they fit a particular criteria like file type or keyword.

Data at the endpoint can be secured by limiting the use of USB ports on client machines, and password protecting the necessary ones. While this isn’t a complete solution, it secures the information enough to prevent all but the most determined hacker.

Data loss prevention is an essential part of any operational strategy and should not be underestimated. It could cost a company a lot more than its reputation.

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The Hosted Model

September 21st, 2009 by No comments »

hostedexchangeMicrosoft Exchange Hosting is a messaging platform built by Microsoft to enable email communication across the globe. It allows organizations to provide email, calendars, contact lists and collaborative technologies to their users either on-site or remotely.

Exchange by itself doesn’t actually do much, it has to be hosted on an Exchange Server. To access it remotely, the system will also need routers, network infrastructure and firewalls as well as a team of people to manage and maintain the system. For Blackberry access a Blackberry Enterprise Server would also be required, adding to the overhead.

Not only is hosting Exchange and expensive thing to set up, it’s also expensive to run. The upfront costs will include new servers, licenses, and all the things mentioned above. Then the running costs of maintenance add up to a significant investment needed by any organization.

Small to medium businesses simply cannot afford these kinds of outgoings, certainly not in the early days. However email is now an invaluable business tool that is essential to effectively communicate internally and externally.

The answer is to let someone else host the system for you and access it remotely. This is called SaaS, or Software as a Service. A vendor or service provider will have an existing infrastructure which a business can rent ‘space’ on. The vendor will supply a web application to their customers who will in turn make it available to their users. The process is completely transparent, the user would have no idea that the application was being hosted remotely.

The popular way to pay for a service like this is by the seat, or user. This provides great flexibility in a changing environment, or the growing business, as the service can be scaled to the exact needs of the organization. This saves money on the upfront costs, and saves even more by not having to build an entire infrastructure for a few users. With the Hosted Exchange model you pay for what you need.

There is also the subject of compliance to consider. Every business in America is subject to stringent compliance laws which mean all email communication has to be stored securely for a number of years. That number depends on the business and the nature of the email but is roughly around five years.

These emails have to be stored securely too, as well as easily searchable, indexed and retrievable. This adds more overhead to anyone running any kind of email system, let alone an Exchange one.

The hosted model also includes compliance in most packages. This again, takes the burden off the small business. The vendor will already have the supporting infrastructure and the expertise to store, index and retrieve the emails when requested.

Microsoft Exchange hosting is an ideal way for a business to have all the benefits of an established IT infrastructure without having the burden of setting one up and running it themselves. It is becoming more and more popular as existing hosts refine the process and improve reliability, and newer operations are springing up to offer credible competition.

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