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E-Mail Archiving Essentials
The increasing incidence of electronic discovery requests during
lawsuits as well as the requirements of legislation such as the Sarbanes
Oxley Act means that any company
with an e-mail server should consider the acquisition of an email
archiving system.
There is a growing demand in organizations large and small for
practical, efficient solutions that simplify archiving and retrieving
e-mail from cumbersome programs like Microsoft Outlook and Outlook
Express. But where should a company begin the process of finding the
best system for its needs?
Before a company purchases any form of message archiving system,
Connected Corporation’s Strategist, Data Protection and Archiving
Technologies, Steve Kenniston recommends that they get their company’s
policies in order.
"First, the IT organization has to have conversations with all the lines
of business to form the policies for message retention. Then they can
investigate the different technologies to see which products support
their policies.
“After that, you can add other requirements for things you'd like to see
the archiving solution solve, like better storage management or policy
management tools that help users avoid noncompliant activities."
With policies established, the company can then begin comparing
archiving systems and be in a much better position to make the best
selection. The following is checklist of email archiving must-haves:
Automation - The system must automatically capture and archive
all incoming or outgoing messages as unique, indexed records.
Security - Each message and any attachments that pass through the
mail server should be compressed, encrypted and digitally signed.
Retention Policy Control - Each message should be classified
according to whether or not it needs to be stored, where it should be
stored, and for how long.
Lifecycle Management - Transparent to the user, messages should
be migrated to the most economical and efficient storage media, based on
the company’s retention policies.
Indexing and Search Capabilities - The archiving program should
index the message header, the text and any attachments. It should also
capture all the MAPI data that describes any actions taken with the
message.
Access Control - A secure archiving system can restrict a message
to authorized users.
Audit Trail - The archiving program should be able to audit every
event that transpired in the life of the message. It should keep a log
of each time the message was accessed, stored or deleted and any changes
that were made.
Support Multiple Messaging Platforms - To ensure compatibility
with standards going forward, the archiving system should support all
key messaging platforms.
Reporting and Sampling Tools - Make sure the software can easily
deliver the reports and audit samples that your organization requires.
Developing and implementing an email archiving system will be an
expensive item for most businesses. Offsetting this is that it can
actually reduce storage costs by allowing email records to be stored on
the most appropriate combination of online, near-line and off-line
media.
An intelligent email archiving system will also cut down on the number
of records a company has to store by ensuring that only relevant
messages are stored. Sophisticated techniques exist that grade how
appropriate an email message is for archiving and direct only relevant
emails to the best location for safekeeping and possible retrieval.
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