Posts Tagged ‘email’

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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Posted in Archiving, Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange

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Email Backups and the Dangers of Modern Day Communication

October 15th, 2010


Email archiving can save you or your business from a technological disaster. Email has become the main method of communicating as well as an important tool for conducting business in the online world. However, that does not mean that email backups have become a thing of the past. In fact, backing up your email to your computer or external hard drive is more important than ever.

Scammers have begun an even more vicious campaign to infect user’s computers. They typically will try to install keylogger viruses which will gain access to your email account. Once they have access to your email, they may spam your friends or try to gain access to all of your others account. Worst of all, they are not going to have a difficult time doing so. Email backup can prevent your email from being lost in all of this mess. It only takes a few minutes, depending upon in box size, to download a backup over SMTP to your local machine. Download speeds can be as fast as 1 MBPS on a larger cable connection.

Many web mail programs have begun to implement tools that allow you to automatically back up your own email. The program may pop up once a week, asking you if you would like to download a backup of your email. You can choose yes or no. This backup typically will be compressed into a zip file which will allow it to be stored almost anywhere. There can be years of email sitting on your desktop. Best of all, your contacts and email addresses stay secure and ready for you to use.

Email backups can mean big business. There are many companies on the market today that are into the business of data restoration as well as data protection. The average hard drive can cost $700-$1200 to restore the data off of it. This depends upon several factors but many hosting companies simply do not have the resources to devote to it. Saving a copy of your emails locally will allow you to quickly and simply restore your contacts as well as detailed emails should you ever encounter a problem. Seven out of ten American companies that encountered a failure with their email systems did not recover from it. They closed their doors within a year. This could be due to the email failure or for other reasons.

Data does not have to be a negative thing. There are millions of people who backup their emails each and every day. It is simply another task that must be done to ensure computer security and peace of mind for individuals. It takes just a few minutes a week or even a day to backup your email. Do not be left out should something terrible happen to your web host. You want to be prepared for whatever technology can throw at you. Think about all of the emails that you have from clients, save them now to protect your business heading forward.

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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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