Your Email Security Lies in Your Hand
Email is critical to your business communications and contains important business records that must be preserved for a longer period as these can be frequently summoned for discovery proceedings. FRCP or the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure make it mandatory for organizations to store this data. But it brings with it a host of problems – dealing with storage limits, periodic backups, problematic PST files, access to old emails and regulatory compliance etc. Failure to address these problems effectively can create serious problems. Hence there is need for email archiving. E-mail archiving is the method of systematically saving and recording copies of mail correspondences that can be accessed anytime when it is required.
Let us understand the underlying principle behind E-Mail archiving. Speaking from a legal point view, there have been rules concerning management of data and record keeping for decades. This is true for specific industries such as law firms, financial enterprises, medical units and few others. The records vary from three or five years to even more. The development in the fields of IT and other communication systems has not altered the legal needs and framework.
The US courts at the same time have put forward rules on what is known as “e-discovery” or the exchange of data via electronic means in legal dealings. Further, the American Association Bar warned the lawyers that e-discovery covers all forms of electronic communication, comprising personal computers, storage media, laptops, mobile phones, PDA’s and many others.
This email backup apart, the organizations and enterprises too must regulate their records in order that important data remain unhampered. Similarly, they should also be able to support the same with valid proof if need arises.
Email archiving process is not about placing the issue to the IT department, who would either develop or purchase an “in-house archival system” for the company. For an effective email archiving there has to be a combined interaction and teamwork between the three departments of IT, Human Resource Development and Legal.
Today companies and enterprises are realizing the importance of a sound mail archiving process. There are leading service providers in the market that are identifying this need and developing products that provide successful results. The upgraded and next generations solutions for email archiving that are present in the market offer great help to the Medium and Small business. There are archiving systems available that are specially created for medium sized enterprises, that guarantees to store and capture emails. Other benefits of the new age email archiving systems are as follows:-
* All compliance requirements are met
* The recovery time and service size requirements are reduced
* Easy use of email discovery
* All data remains secured through encryption and tamper proofing
* Email retrieval and search is faster
* The retention policies are highly customizable
Keeping in mind all the above-mentioned reasons email archiving has become a key business practice today.