Archive for the ‘Archiving’ category

What Do You Know About Email Archiving Solutions?

February 16th, 2011

email-iconAn email archiving solution is a standalone IT application that is installed on an enterprise email server such as MS Exchange and Lotus Domino. Once up and running, this software will be in charge of saving copies of sent and received emails for record keeping and compliance purposes.

Most companies will benefit from choosing and installing one of the many email archiving solution available. However, the following types of companies will require such a system due to those compliance reasons: banks, financial institutions, police headquarters, healthcare facilities, government offices, and the construction industry.

Why Email Archiving is Important

Emails are very important communication tool for every type of business. According to recent studies, almost 97 percent of all business communication was handled through email. Another survey went further to investigate the importance of emails and uncovered that 79 percent of all businesses accept emails as conformation of approvals or orders.

A third survey also managed to highlight the importance of email in today’s business sphere by disclosing that 83 percent of a business’ critical information can be found in these electronic messages. With so much importance given to emails today, it is no wonder that the need for email archiving solutions is growing on a daily basis.

Most companies in the United States are bound legally to keep and manage their emails because of the delicate nature of the information exchanged through them.  Emails can be requested as evidence in legal cases, which is why companies make sure that they are stored in their original state and have to ensure that records are as complete as possible.

Email archiving is useful in this regard because it reduces the amount of time spent on searching for emails relevant to cases and eliminates the need to spend so much money on retrieving emails saved on a backup system.

Benefits of Email Archiving

By installing an email archiving system in your company, you will be able to take advantage of the numerous benefits these systems have to offer. Some of the benefits you can enjoy are:

  • Monitoring Employee Communication – Though some may say that this is an invasion of employees’ privacy, businesses need to secure themselves and ensure that their information isn’t emailed outside the company. Email archiving systems allow you to make flags for certain words and terms to ensure sensitive information isn’t being shared when it shouldn’t be.
  • Speeding Up the Email Server – One of the common problems which hinder an email server is the fact that many employees store data in their mailboxes. Larger mailboxes means the mail server has more to do to manage them. However, archiving emails creates more space on the server and ensures that it can concentrate on passing email traffic as designed.
  • Countering System Failure – Archiving emails prevents your information and correspondence from being deleted altogether if the system fails. With so much information stored in inboxes, it can be devastating to lose them.

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

August 11th, 2010

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

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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Data Leak Prevention

November 20th, 2009

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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