Posts Tagged Email

Email Compliance – Are You Ready for It?

Email Compliance – Are You Ready for It?

Most business today is conducted by email, including sending important and sometimes confidential messages. According to Osterman Research, email contains approximately 75 percent of the information used by an organization’s individuals on a daily basis. With so much information going around the world every day, many companies often ignore regulatory compliance. Email compliance regulations and laws, such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), Gramm-Leach-Bliley, HIPAA and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures, have forced organizations to know more about the information stored in their systems than ever before. Email today contains a host of valuable and highly sensitive information that needs to be stored, retrieved and viewed on demand.

Conserving email has been made mandatory, thanks to the various regulatory compliance and legal risk management regulations that govern every country. It is top priority for IT managers today due to regulatory obligations and harsh penalties along with the prospect of enormous civil damages and even criminal prosecution. An email archiving solution is mission-critical to satisfying these obligations. Having regulations policies in place can save your company significant hassle and protect it from the financial implications of non-compliance.

This article provides simple steps to secure your email archiving system to meet compliance and protect yourself from potential litigation and at the same time provide you with some user benefits.

Email Management – There should clear cut guidelines and rules set with regards to the usage of email. There should be a check on the kinds of emails being sent and received, especially messages going out from the organization as they might contain information that should not leave the corporate walls or malicious information that could harm the receiver. Proper scanning mechanisms should be in place.

Secure Information Sharing – Security of information in the corporate system is very important. What you share with your partners or vendors needs to be secure as the information could be misused. Such messages should be properly encrypted so that no one else can have access to it. Keep track of who has access to what information. How centralized is the information? What format is it in? All this needs to be in order.

Educate Your Workforce – When it comes to compliance and security, it is best to educate your staff regarding email security and why it is important.

Centralized Decision Making – Users should not make important decisions pertaining to enterprise security. Important data should be handled centrally.

Evaluate and Improve Security Policies – Do you cut off physical and online access to your server once an employee resigns? Is personal information that you send over the internet encrypted? Is your online information secure?

The management of an organization is responsible for ensuring that emails are handled in compliance with applicable laws, regulations and frameworks of best practice. Non-compliance not only can lead to fines and criminal prosecution but can also ruin an organization’s reputation. Email encryption, together with content monitoring and control technology, can provide complete email compliance protection.

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Top 3 Email Archiving Strategies for Your Enterprise

Top 3 Email Archiving Strategies for Your Enterprise

Email archiving strategies are essentially of three different types: in-house email archiving, hosted email archiving and hybrid email archiving. In this article we will explore the strengths of each of these strategies.

In-house email archiving, as the name suggests, is doing the email archiving completely within the enterprise; the data center is hosted and managed by the enterprise itself. In-house email archiving helps keep information within the enterprise, and it also ensures that tailor-made email archiving elements can be achieved that suit the enterprise’s goals and objectives. Such an email strategy ensures that enterprises have complete control over their email as well as ensures that they can be in command of the finances kept aside for email archiving purposes.

Even as there are plenty of enterprises who promote in-house email archiving, there are a few problems too, such as increased archiving maintenance costs, hiring of extra resources, etc. Owing to these problems, many other enterprises opt for hosted email archiving. In the hosted email archiving system, an enterprise’s emails are sent to the service provider who is entrusted with the job of storing it and ensuring that it can be retrieved whenever the enterprise wishes to see it. Since it is a simple exchange of service and the price paid is for a service, it can be stopped if the enterprise is unhappy with it. Alternatively hosted email archiving works for smaller enterprises who do not have a full-fledged IT department, which means that all their IT and systems worries about email archiving will be handled by the outsourced email archiving partner.

Despite the numerous benefits of a hosted email archiving system, many enterprises feel that asking an outside partner to manage their confidential email records can be detrimental for their enterprise. Therefore many enterprises are disinclined to opt for an external service provider for their email archiving needs because they still want to have control over their confidential email information. Such enterprises often opt for hybrid email archiving strategies. Email archiving solutions such as hybrid email archiving quite simply combine both in-house and hosted email archiving strategies and merge the actual benefits of the two. A system is typically fixed at the enterprise’s worksite which manages all the capturing of email traffic and sends it as an encrypted code to the service provider to be stored for future use or retrieval by the enterprise.

Enterprises are typically looking for email archiving solutions and strategies that are within their budgets and are also capable of providing the best possible service for data retention and retrieval.

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www.rackspace.com presents ” In-house vs. Rackspace Microsoft® Dedicated Exchange – The ROI & TCO Story”

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Email management plays important role in your business, handle it efficiently

Email management plays important role in your business, handle it efficiently

Email has assumed high importance in accelerating the pace of business transactions and has become a fastest medium for communication, exchange of ideas and information. With widespread use of email in handling important and sensitive transactions, email security has become one of the critical functions of email management. Email management also involves email storage, formulation of email policy, auditing and making provision of foolproof email backup and email spam filters to ensure uninterrupted availability of email facility.

There are number of email client programmes like Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook offered by Microsoft. These email management applications are offered free of cost in bundle with Internet Explorer web browser. Email client programmes allow users to customize as per their own preferences all the mails they receive or send and also provide option of email set up rules.

With ever increasing threat of spy ware and viruses on the Internet, it has become very difficult to handle security aspect of email management without adopting a proactive approach towards the issue. Email problem can be caused by your email client configuration through which you get access to your email account, or it can also arise with your account itself. It is more often difficult to pin point the real culprit.

In order to make email management efficient enough, it is necessary to adopt layered approach, deploying services of computer support technicians or hiring email support agency services.

You can get comprehensive email management support or email backup support from computer support services companies which employ well experienced computer support technicians to fix email problems at client’s end. These companies are like one stop shops and their email management support includes storage of email, access to users both at user levels and server levels and flow of mail. They also provide mobile email solutions.

By hiring expert services of email management companies you can protect your business from unlawful and malicious attacks. Email support provided by the email management services takes care of your email security through use of email spam filters, virus scanners and fixing of errors by providing mobile email solutions.

These email management services also do installation and configuration of your new email accounts and help set up free email accounts with your ISP. Their computer support technicians also activate spam blockers for prevention of adult spam. They assist you in framing email set up rules to facilitate easy access and storage.

Looking for Mobile Email Solutions, contact Sagari. Sagari provide complete email management to Small and Medium sized businesses in UK


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Email Retention and Management

Email Retention and Management

Ever wondered what the life would have been with out the use of Emails. The moment one talks about internet, the first thing that comes into the mind is email. No doubt, the emails today are considered as the best means of conveying messages and has simplified our lives enabling exchange of information and the best use of communication. It has also been the most cost-saving option to get connected and stay tuned. But, as a matter of fact, the retention of emails and mailbox management has gathered wide attention since email has been part of the core business process and fetches real return on investment.
So much importance the emails have acquired today that most of the business transactions take place through it’s use rather than the use of cellphones. The email facility is now available even in the cellphones which are WAP enabled. The storage of mailboxes has facilitated good working condition for all businesses. Even the sales calls to customers and the new leads are generated through the use of emails in the present time. Barring a few organizations almost all of them communicate internally through emails. Indeed mail has become a part of daily life.
For many reasons like business, legal and regulatory, email needs to stored and managed. In the quest for better business values and productivity, some methods need to be adopted in order to manage emails. The most important thing to remember in this regard is one must know what all emails to save and when to shift from redundant mails to primary mails which can be put to good use and deliver strategic advantage. The biggest problem with the emails today is the entry of spams and the large volume of stored emails. Subsequently, the organizations have invested on tools to manage email storage and spam removal. In this regard certain laws have been enforced so as to have an access to these mails since the organizations seek help from the third party to manage them.
Some of the following methods will help the effective retention and management of emails.
• Use email archives: Save your past emails under the separate category of Archive section. A range of tools like the Mail manager software under the Microsoft Exchange lets the user view the mails stored under the archives.
• Frame certain rules for storage and deletion of mails: As soon as you finish up with the important work as asked in the email message, delete them after a certain period of time. Ask other employees to do the same.
• Keep away the junk mails: With malware, spams making its space as junk mails, delete all of them at once or at the best install a software which would block the entry of spam into your mails.
• Adopt best practices suitable to your organizational size: Retaining emails by process of Archiving may help the SMBs but not the large scale organizations. In such a situation, be very selective in usage and storage of emails. Invest on the storage solutions only when you feel the need.
• Maintain the regulatory environment: In order to abide by the software rules and regulations regarding email management, you may need to retain certain mails. Also follow regarding privacy of mails.
• Always get your mails monitored: You need to actively monitor, check the records, ensure regulatory compliance, all these will require help from an IT manager. Some vendors offer browser based email monitoring and reporting and archiving of products.
In any case, if you have organized your mailbox effectively by archiving, you are relieved from the yoke of storage. One good example of mailbox management tool is Artisan, an archiving solution for Microsoft Exchange. By centrally managing the user’s mailboxes reduces the costs of storage. It enables automatic archival of mail contents and allows long-term storage. The main advantage of having Artisan is it is easy to install apart from many other important features.


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Elsa explains what Exchange email archiving software is all about. Elsa appears courtesy of Red Gate Software (www.red-gate.com).

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Email Management Helps Tame Email Overload

Email Management Helps Tame Email Overload

You’re in good company if, like other firms with no email management strategy, your employees are complaining they’re being overwhelmed by email. The convenience of email is quickly being lost in the time spent reading, responding to and managing it.

There are three important reasons to get your company’s email overload under control. Let’s examine how compliance, employee efficiency and electronic discovery are compromised by an unruly email management system. 

Compromised Compliance

If your employees regularly receive email with legal documents attached having a structured electronic content management (ECM) system is crucial. This would ensure that your emails related to documenting commitments and obligations are recorded, complete and easily retrievable.

Ask yourself these questions: “Do my employees always document receipt of business-critical documents by email?” and “What kind of legal documentation is received that isn’t being stored in a way that allows access by others?”

If you’re unsure of the answers to those questions, your company’s compliance with contractual and regulatory requirements could be at risk. Contracts received but not documented, changes made to legal documents but not tracked or saved in a centralized document management system are just two of the problems that arise when email remains unmanaged.

Compromised Employee Efficiency

Recent studies show that workers at major companies are spending at least one hour, and many of them up to three hours, every day reading, responding to and trying to manually manage email. Overflowing in-boxes keep employees chained to their in-box and away from their primary job duties.

Capturing, sorting, storing and retrieving email messages and attachments manually and not having  an automated record retention and email destruction schedule are some of the ways efficiency is compromised .

To get a picture of what email handling is costing you in terms of employee efficiency, multiply your total number of employees who receive email by one hour. That’s the minimum number of man hours per day you’re probably losing to inefficient email management.

Compromised Electronic Discovery

Electronic legal discovery is often necessary when litigation is filed by or against your company. It’s the process of retrieving and examining electronic records for information relevant to legal action or compliance reviews.

Being able to retrieve electronic documents and messages quickly is vital to a strong legal defense or compliance strategy, and mandated by law. Surprisingly, many companies still do not have a formal system for archiving employee email in a way that makes that retrieval straightforward.

Even worse, many companies have no written policies about when employee email can be deleted. You may find yourself forced to explain that critical messages were deleted by employees because no email retention policy was in place.

Additional Security

Security is always enhanced when email automation is implemented. Automated encryption and other critical security measures are built into the data capture and storage process. Centralized email storage, as opposed to local machine storage, reduces the possibility of a security breach. Automating the retention and destruction schedules for email throughout your organization removes the human factor and insures uniform compliance with your firm’s email policies.

An Affordable Solution

One or more of these roadblocks to efficient operation may already be affecting your company if it has no formal email management system in place. You may, however, have delayed implementing electronic content management due to concerns about cost, digital storage space and IT staffing requirements.

Fortunately, today’s sophisticated email management systems are within reach of most organizations. Because this type of system can be part of a full-featured document management system, it requires no additional IT staffing or hardware outlay. It is also easy to use and economical to implement.

You can actually realize significant savings through increased employee efficiency brought about by automated management and fast retrieval of documents and emails.  Having the ability to access this information off-site via a secure web–based document management repository further improves efficiency and minimizes costs.

A well-designed ECM system enhances security, increases employee efficiency and allows timely compliance with regulations and electronic discovery requests. If your employees are buried by email overload, it’s time to introduce centralized email management as part of a document management strategy at your firm. The efficiencies you’ll realize will have you wondering why you waited so long.

Mitch is the principal founder of Digiscribe, which he formed in 2002 to provide companies of all sizes with cost-effective paperless office solutions.

With over 20 years of experience in the information services industry, Mitch brings a wealth of expertise and insight to the company. He is a CompTIA Certified Document Imaging Architect (CDIA+); a certification that proves expertise in the technologies and best practices used to plan, design, and specify a document imaging, management system.

Mitch served as Chairman and Committee Member of the Association of Information and Image Management (AIIM) Document Management Service Bureau Executive Forum. He speaks at various industry seminars and trade shows.

In 1988, Mitch founded International Data Services (IDS) of New York. Under his leadership, IDS grew to become a leading data management company, providing data entry, data processing, coding and indexing services to corporations and service bureaus nationwide, as well as litigation support and database building services to leading law firms.

In 1997, Mitch merged IDS into ImageMax, a nationwide information management services company. While at ImageMax, he served as the National Sales and Marketing Manager and held a seat on the Board of Directors for three years.

Certifications
• Certified Document Imaging Architect (CDIA+)
• Digitech Systems Certified Reseller
• FileBound Certified Professional
• AnyDoc Certified Referral Reseller
Education
• MBA, Hofstra University
• Bachelor Degree, Hofstra University

Community Involvement
• Founding Member, Briarcliff Manor Education Foundation
• Midnight Run Coordinator (provides food and clothing to the homeless in metropolitan NYC).


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Email Archiving: are You Prepared for Unforeseen Legal Search Issues?

Email Archiving: are You Prepared for Unforeseen Legal Search Issues?

As every businessperson knows, controlling costs and increasing production is the basic business formula to achieve success. In reality, actually achieving that success is a much harder and intense proposition that requires you to provide a little wiggle room on both sides of the equation to deal with those pesky, unforeseen bumps in the road.

But what happens when a situation occurs that is so outside the sphere of normal business operations that you can neither deal efficiently nor effectively with it in order to get back to business as usual? In today’s technology driven business environment, this “situation” could be e-Discovery.

E-Discovery is defined as any process in which electronic data is sought, located, secured, and searched with the intent of being used as evidence in a civil or criminal legal case. E-Discovery has the potential to become an extremely costly and time consuming undertaking especially when dealing with the retrieval of emails from archaic archiving systems commonly used today. To ease the burden, businesses are looking to companies such as Estorian who have developed software products that retrieve targeted communications sent via email and that work transparently with their own computer networks.

Still, the problem remains in that, despite the growing marketplace, businesses often do not know exactly what solutions they need to deal effectively with email archiving and retrieval. Or, if they are looking at various software packages, they do not know what key features that software should include. The following provides an overview to get you started:

• Software that is easy and quick to install, thus saving you time, money and resources during the initial set up.

• Simple user interface that is intuitive as well as easy for you to navigate.

• Multiple search options available such as keyword, sender/recipient (internal and external), date, time, attachments, subject, inbox/outbox, importance level, etc. so you can pull data from archives faster and more efficiently.

• Real time capabilities, i.e. the ability to set up recurring future searches (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) for investigations into specific subjects/email exchanges.

• Multiple location and file save capabilities such as .pdf, outlook folder, desktop folder, etc. for easy organization of email search reports.

• Flexibility to allow for future upgrades to search capabilities regarding legal and technological advances (IMs, chats, eFaxes, etc.).

Software packages such as Estorian’s LookingGlass incorporates all of these features and more, thereby providing businesses with an easy solution to company wide email archival and retrieval. As a result of using such products, businesses are reducing their legal and financial risk by continuously monitoring e-communications records across geographic locations and technical platforms from one single, easy to use interface.

Heather Bishara is a freelance writer and marketing executive for Tricalyx.


Article from articlesbase.com

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Email Archive Appliance

Email Archive Appliance

Today email system is the biggest tool in every business & this dependency of email system on business brings various problems. There are many issues which generally arise like: Storage, backups, problematic PST files, access to old emails and legal compliance. To solve and tackle these problems you need an Email Archiving Software & Email management solution.


Not only this, you need such a kind Email archiving solution which should be cost effective, easy to install and need very less administrative efforts.


So here is a solution of your problem. ITA Networks offers Email Archiving Software for Exchange Server 2000, 2003 & 2007. ITA Networks Email Archive easily manage the email processing system & its simple functions need very less administrative efforts to search and restore emails & archive mails.


• ITA Networks email archive works automatically & copy every single email that pass through Exchange server & stores all the mails in email server database.

• You could use stored emails from database anytime even when Exchange Server is offline due to problems or any reason.

• ITA Networks email archive moves essential & important data from mailboxes and stores the data Exchange Server database.

• ITA Networks email Archive extracts attachments form mails and save attachments separately & provides link for attachments in the links.

• ITA Networks email Archive provides security in case of critical e-mails getting lost due to PST files getting corrupted or e-mails getting lost for any reason. Backups take time to restore whereas Admin T own email Archive provides instant access to the e-mails, one more important reason for deploying ITA Networks email Archive on your network today.

• ITA Networks email Archive comes with built in SQL Database, so you do not have need to purchase additional software to store the emails.

• ITA Networks email Archive provides ability of search, view and restore emails to all users.

• ITA Networks email Archive connector system makes the process of archiving existing e-mails completely automated, easy, and effortless.


So with the help of ITA Networks email archive solution make your email system effortless and get good performance. To know more about of ITA Networks email Archive, visit this link:
Email Archive Appliance


For free Download visit here: Download Email Archive Appliance


If you need more information about ITA Networks email Archive software for Exchange Server 2000, 2003 & 2007 then you go through with these links:
Email Archive Appliance

sachin aggarwal offering ideas about Email Archive Appliance with the help of www.itanetworks.com

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Why Businesses need a Solution for Outlook Email Archiving

Why Businesses need a Solution for Outlook Email Archiving

Ranging from business compliance to the performance of Outlook itself there are many reasons why in today’s world a company needs to look for a successful Outlook email archiving solution. There are a number of issues that businesses face with regards to email archiving and compliance below this article focuses on the more critical issues and some of the solutions to these problems. Whilst this article is focusing predominantly on businesses that use the Outlook and Microsoft Exchange systems much of what is discussed will be relevant to all businesses, particularly in the US and the UK.

Research has shown that the average worker can spend up to 90 minutes of every workday managing their mailboxes and performing archiving and data management tasks. This leads to loss of productivity to the entire business. Aside from the productivity issues most Exchange servers are only set to backup information once per day, meaning that any emails that have been deleted through the course of a day are not archived this can also be said to the auto archiving feature that Outlook has.  Also due to the way that the auto-archive feature works, finding a specific email that has been archived is incredibly laborious and time consuming.

There are several issues that need to be looked at with regard to the need for a good email archiving solution, these issues are outlined below.

Data flow over time

Before looking at any of the legal ramifications or performance problems of not having a good email archiving solutions it is important to first look at the points which create these issues.

Even smaller companies will generate massive amounts of emails over a long period of time.  This is caused by storage of emails and attachments, however part of the problem stems from having all versions of these emails stored for example: an email is sent out with a 1 MB attachment to every employee (30 people). Every reply to that email is also now being stored along with the original email text. Whilst the email sizes are not of any real significance at this point, over a period of a year with multiple instances of this example the storage required will add up, especially with taking into account the attachment being saved also.

Auto Archiving

Many businesses feel that they have no problems with archiving as they have the Outlook auto archiving in place for their company emails. This unfortunately is not as helpful as it may at first seem to be.  As mentioned earlier, any emails deleted prior to the auto-archive taking place are not archived.  This in itself provides massive issues with compliance which will be covered later. 

A common problem shared by all companies that rely on the Outlook auto archive tool is initially the build up of emails and more specifically the overall deterioration of performance from the Microsoft Exchange servers as a consequence of a large email volume.  As the Exchange servers fill with archived emails the system begins to slow and takes longer to perform each backup. The servers filling also increase the chance of a critical systems failure.

Outlook saves all email data as .pst files when it archives the old emails. Many .pst files will be created over time as bulk archives are created over a period of time. How often this happens depends on the specific settings a company has organised themselves and how many emails the company has sent and received within specifically set parameters. These parameters would be determined by the company’s individual settings.  The more data stored on a .pst file the slower the servers and Outlook will function for their various daily tasks such as a backup.

A more pressing concern with the way that Outlook auto archive functions however is that bulk email packages are saved as .pst files, specifically a maximum storage per file of 20 GB. 20 GB of space can store thousands of emails; if a .pst file is corrupted the information on every one of those emails can potentially be lost forever.  Aside from the difficulty for an individual to navigate these files to locate specific emails when called upon to do so, if the files are lost this can provide very costly issues with regard to compliance.

Compliance

The issues of compliance covers multiple different points that will affect companies to different degrees depending on what countries they are in or do business with. That said all of these points are worth understanding as the laws are quickly changing world wide to cover the issues raised by emails being regarded as legal documents. Whilst the specifics below are predominantly for the UK, other countries will have similar laws with different specifics laid out.

Freedom of Information Act 2000 (UK)

The public have the right to ask for copies of emails from public authorities. The authorities then have 20 days in which to provide the copies.

Data Protection Act

Individuals have the right to request for copies of personal data held about them by an authority or company. The authority or company then has a 40 day time frame for compliance; failure to comply can lead to heavy fines.

Employment Tribunals

The highest possible award at a tribunal for unfair dismissal in the UK is £66,200. With more communication in the places of work happening via email, companies need to ensure that they have easy access to all possible evidence available to protect themselves

Court Actions

A wronged party has 6 years from the date that a contract has been breached or a civil wrong committed to bring a court action. With emails potentially being used by either party it is necessary for a company or organisation to be able to access any information required that was stored within those previous 6 years. This means it is paramount that an organisation has the best possible email archiving system available to them.  The system the organisation uses can make the difference between winning and losing a court action.  Furthermore inability to provide requested evidence can result in heavy fines depending on the nature of the court action, thus having the ability to store and easily find the information could avoid these fines before a court action ever reaches a court.

 

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act

This is a piece of US legislation also affects any company outside of the US which is listed on NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange, including subsidiaries of US companies that are themselves based outside of the US. The Act states that any transactional data meet the requirement of the Act.  Furthermore the Act sates over several sections that an organisation’s IT department is obligated to be able to provide any and all electronic data pertinent to a potential case during the discovery period in the event of a lawsuit or investigation.  Simply put an organisation must be able to provide copies of any electronic data as requested during the discovery period, the period prior to a case where evidence is collected to prepare for the legal proceeding, to a legal action.  Failure to provide the evidence in the discovery period results in heavy fines which are weighted against the nature of the legal proceeding.

The Solution

Most of the problems outlined above are not new and have been occurring for years, however with the exponential increase in the use of computers and by extension email these problems have begun to be far more severe and obvious.  The only possible solution is for a company to utilise an email archiving solution. The qualities one should look for in an email archiving solution, as outlined by the problems listed above, are as follows:

Can function independently from the Outlook’s auto archive facility Allows for settings to be standardised with capacity for users to create and archive new email folders with ease A program that does not rely on storing emails in bulk but instead saves each email individually so as to avoid the issues of file corruption. However still provides the functionality to archive files at the same time A solution that allows for customised archiving structures allowing companies to tailor how and where the files are saved. A solution which allows for deletion upon archiving of the emails from Outlook to again avoid high email volume effecting Microsoft Exchange servers Intuitive design to negate the need for training or complications prior to use of the solution. A solution that saves emails in a format that is readable independently of Outlook

It is important that all these criteria be met at the very least when looking for a solution to email archiving with Outlook to avoid all of the problems listed above. In the end avoiding these problems could save your business time and money and avoid the issue of decreased productivity from staff spending too much time organising mailboxes.

MsgSave is an Outlook add-in designed to tackle all of the afore mentioned issues and many more. MsgSave is offered in 3 different versions to meet your specific needs. MsgSave is a product of Sarcophagus a leader in IT business solutions.

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The Benefits of Email Compliance in a Business

The Benefits of Email Compliance in a Business

Email has become the standard method of correspondence used by businesses sending important and sometimes confidential messages. Such sensitive information needs to be archived for possible future use in order to comply with eDiscovery requests, specific regulations as well as the company’s email compliance policies.
Email correspondence is used for both internal and external affairs therefore it is important that a copy of all emails is archived for possible future needs relating to legal, compliance and human resource issues. A company must also be in a position to respond to eDiscovery requests at short notice.
Why a company needs email archiving
Existing regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and the FRCP treat emails as being equal to paper-based documents in terms of valid and legal documentation presented in a court of law and are therefore admissible during an eDiscovery request.
eDiscovery is the process of locating, securing and using documentation from a company’s archives in a legal setting, so a company must have the ability to procure the necessary documents with the confirmation that these have not been tampered with. Failure to abide by procedures could result in court fines and other financial burdens, as well as a failing reputation.
How email archiving should be implemented
For security, maintenance and resource reasons, email archives should not be archived on the mail server but should have their own localized server that is specific to the task.
Having your emails archived on a separate database ensures more protection for the archives should the server crash, as well as lightening the load on the server. When archiving is another process that the email server is meant to handle, its resources are being stretched to capacity risking poor performance in both tasks. A dedicated email server and a dedicated archiving server render the upkeep of both machines a simpler and cleaner process.
Moreover, separate backups of both servers ensure a safer environment, as by having the archived emails on a separate server, should the email server crash all is not lost since the archived emails would be accessible and easily recoverable meaning that work can be resumed from a certain point.
Email archiving compliance
In industries and countries where regulations require organizations to monitor user activity and keep audit trails, a system that records, logs and retains a database of user activity, or other secure methods such as encryption will ensure that emails have not been tampered with as this would render them inadmissible in a court of law. An auditing facility is also important for compliance purposes.
Log files and counts must prove that all emails (including their attachments) are being captured and can be searched for, found and viewed in their original format. Advising users that their emails are being recorded and archived will act as a deterrent to any abuse of the system.
Email archiving is becoming a standard practice in today’s businesses as the implementation of a successful email compliance policy could save a company a lot of time, money and resources, and provide guarantees that it is in a position to respond to eDiscovery processes and fulfil the requirements of compliance regulation which the company must adhere to.

Jesmond Darmanin is a freelance writer who is passionate about business IT issues and recommends the use of email archiving software for email compliance and eDiscovery requirements.

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