Posts Tagged ‘email archiving’

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.

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.