Email Archiving - The Achilles Heel of Document and Records Management

Email has developed into a major communication channel within every company with thousands of them being exchanged every day. As most business critical information is sent over email, it is imperative for companies to archive all records, whether in paper or electronic form for compliance purposes. The need for compliance has been mandatory due to demands made by government and regulatory bodies like the SEC, Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II, which were primarily driven by instances of email mismanagement. Over the last couple of years more than 90% of disputes have included email as part of the evidence.

According to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, public companies must keep all documents and communications for seven years following an audit. The penalties for destroying or altering a document can include fines of up to $5 million and imprisonment for up to 20 years. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure state that businesses that have the potential to be involved in lawsuits must prepare themselves to turn over email communications, if requested in a court case. Companies who don't have access to this information may lose lawsuits or incur extra expenses to recover necessary emails. Hence, email is becoming the Achilles heel of document and records management. The best way to protect yourself is through an effective email archiving solution that has become a major challenge for companies.

What is Email Archiving?

Email archiving is an organized way of capturing, saving and protecting every email that moves through your organizations server so that users can access it later, all the while conserving storage space. Email archiving makes it easy to store and manage large volumes of email at a single time and with search and retrieve tools to locate specific emails within minutes, saving companies precious time.

Email archiving not only ensures that the organization remains compliant with applicable laws and regulations; it is the best way to meet eDiscovery requirements. Although email archiving projects are frequently managed by the exchange server administrator, the choice of email archiving software must be carefully evaluated before implementing.

Benefits of Email Archiving

More and more businesses are now using archiving for storage management, to monitor employee communications and for disaster recovery.

Monitoring Employee Communication – This is usually used in legal proceedings where e-mail evidence is requested in association with an employee’s violation of corporate e-mail policies or misuse of business e-mail.

Storage Management – Archiving data helps eliminate past messages and helps free up space on the email server.

Disaster Recovery - Disaster can halt the normal operation of day-to-day business activities. Archiving helps recover the information to the same or to a new server at disk-transfer and LAN speeds. You can recover accidentally deleted or destroyed records that have been archived.

Working without an email archiving solution could be dangerous. Email archiving is perfect for companies who are looking for a solution to protect their mission critical data, reduce server load from emails and preserve data for legal and regulatory compliance requirements.

You may also take a look at -   email archiving solutions  and  email compliance