Simple Steps to Compliance - Archiving Electronic Messages For Competitive Advantage

The way people communicate with each other insearch interface.
both personal and business contexts has changedIn-house Archive Advantages
dramatically in a few short decades. In today'sTo create an email archive, companies have two
virtual, paperless world, massive quantities ofbasic options. With an in-house email archive, the
information can be transmitted in seconds fromcompany buys and manages the solution on its
one location to another, anywhere in the world.own. With an outsourced solution, the company's
As companies adopt and benefit from messagingemail is stored and managed offsite by a
technologies, they also struggle to define thethird-party vendor.
parameters for their appropriate use. Forcing theThe exploding email archiving market has been
issue are governing bodies and regulators in allflooded with vendors and archiving solutions.
industries, who have imposed strict requirementsChoosing an archiving solution can be
on the storage and management of messagingoverwhelming, particularly for companies with no
data in response to groundbreaking lawsuits inemail usage policy in place yet feeling pressured
recent years.by growing industry regulations and the threat of
Organizations of all sizes are now realizing that alitigation. That said, there are a number of
corporate email archive is no longer a luxury, butcompelling reasons to establish an in-house
a necessity in today's regulatory environment.archiving solution:
What may seem an overwhelming prospect,Simplicity. Depending on the chosen solution, an
however, should also be viewed as a key tool inin-house archiving appliance can take up no more
creating a company's strategic advantage. More,space than an average router and can be up and
email archiving need not be daunting. Incrediblerunning in a matter of hours. Even in IT
growth in this market has led to easy anddepartments with a team of one, managing the
affordable archiving options for companies of allappliance is relatively simple, and requires little or
sizes.no IT experience. Initial setup is typically
The Exploding Marketcompleted with the appliance vendor or integration
By 2011, the market for email archiving solutionspartner.
will increase nearly 10-fold to almost $6.1 billion, upSecurity. Given the highly confidential nature of
from $796 million in 2006, according tomany email communications and file attachments,
independent market research firm The Radicaticompany leaders are often uncomfortable having
Group. North America and Europe will be thetheir data housed off-site by a third party -
largest markets, accounting for 60 percent andespecially as email archiving is currently an
32 percent of global sales, respectively. What'sunregulated industry.
driving this demand? The three trends below.The concern is shared by regulators, including the
Worldwide explosion in email and instantNational Association of Securities Dealers (NASD),
messaging (IM) usage. The average corporatewhich has said in a Member Notice, "outsourcing
email user sends and receives a total of 133an activity or function to a third party does not
messages per day, one-quarter of which are sentrelieve members of their ultimate responsibility for
with attachments. Enterprise IM adoption is alsocompliance..." In other words, the buck stops with
heating up. As demand grows, major platformsthe end-user organization.
including IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft LCSReliability. With an outsourced solution, server
OCS are making IM a key component of theirperformance can be compromised during
unified communications strategies.high-volume periods as messages must share the
The increasing storage requirements of corporatesame bandwidth, whether they're being sent,
email users. As more graphics-rich forms andreceived, or archived. In contrast, an in-house
documents are sent as email attachments,archive captures copies of all incoming and
average email message sizes are rapidly rising. Inoutgoing messages after or before they make
2006, the average corporate email user sent andcontact with the outside world, with no impact on
received roughly 16.4 MB of data per day. Bya company's bandwidth or server performance.
2010, that figure is expected to exceed 21.4 MB.Cost-effectiveness. For smaller companies, the
Regulatory compliance requirements. Anappeal of an outsourced solution may be its
increasingly litigious environment surrounding theapparent cheaper price tag. Over time, however,
use and storage of email and other messagingthe cost analysis favors in-house solutions.
data has affected companies in virtually allFor example, a 100-person company might pay
industries. Federal rules obligate companies to$10,000 for an in-house archiving appliance. The
produce electronic evidence. Companies that cancompany handles ongoing management of the
not save, find, and share their emails risk losingarchive, so it pays no recurring costs. The same
their credibility in court. Analyst firm AMRcompany might pay $3,500 per month for an
Research estimates that by 2010, complianceoutsourced solution (100 seats x $35 per seat -
spending in North America will exceed $80 billion,the current mid-range cost of an outsourced
which may be characterized as a hidden tax onarchive), and those costs would recur each month
profits.the company chooses to archive its email.
Challenges Facing OrganizationsIn-house Archiving in Action
Companies large and small face a number ofAn in-house archiving appliance can be set up in a
common challenges when it comes to theirmatter of hours, and completely integrated into a
messaging systems, including:company's existing email interface. Here's how the
The need to comply. Government and industryarchiving appliance works with the company's
regulations are very specific about theiremail solution:
compliance requirements. In addition to industry1. Once an incoming message/file has passed
requirements, some companies implement theirthrough the company's firewall and spam filters, it
own messaging retention policies. Others don't. Amoves to the router.
survey by the American Management Association2. If the email system is managed in-house (e.g.,
and The E-Policy Institute reveals that 66 percentMicrosoft Exchange, Lotus Notes or another
of companies lack policies for saving, purging andnetworked system), the archiving appliance
managing email.captures every message and its attachments (a
The need for all users to quickly access andprocess called "journaling").
manage corporate information. The sheer volume3. If the email platform is hosted by a third-party
of electronic messaging is overwhelming users,provider or is a less-common, proprietary email
rapidly turning email into a productivity issue forsystem, the archiving appliance captures a copy
many companies. In fact, an Osterman Researchof all messaging traffic as it passes through the
survey found that 46 percent of email usersswitch or router (a process called "sniffing").
spend more than two hours each day doing4. Users can then access their email archives and
something in their email inbox.perform basic or advanced searches through their
The need to store increasing quantities of dataemail program.
without affecting system performance. As theThe company's compliance officer - often the IT
size of the average user's email box continues toperson in smaller companies - also needs little IT
rapidly swell, organizations spend more timetraining to define the rules by which messaging
restoring crashed servers and managing mailboxestraffic will be monitored and captured. Those rules
(often deleting useful information) to meetcan be dictated by the compliance requirements
required quotas.governing the company's industry, by the
Why Archive Electronic Messages?company's own email policy, or both. Changes can
An email archive, in a nutshell, is a system thatbe made at any time via drop-down menus.
automatically obtains messages, attachments, andOvercoming Archiving Inertia
information about the messages from emailThe threat of non-compliance lawsuits or system
servers. It then indexes and automatically storescrashes due to storage capacity shortfalls
that information in read-only format for amotivate many companies to archive their email.
specified length of time, based on the company'sHowever, smart companies also understand that
or industry's retention policy.email is a growing repository of organizational
Email and IM content stored in the archiveintelligence, one that can be mined for a better
remains accessible to the user without placing anunderstanding of the company, its customers, and
unnecessary load on the email server. An archiveits opportunities for growth and improvement.
also enables companies to define policies, searchEven in the absence of a formal email
for messages, and maintain an audit trail of whomanagement and retention policy, a company
accessed a message and when. A companyshould begin archiving today. A good in-house
creates an archive of its email and IM data forarchive can be easily adapted as a corporate
four key reasons.policy develops. The worst thing to do is nothing -
Compliance. Organizations in virtually all industries -and with a few simple steps, companies can not
from financial services to health care, governmentonly ensure their future compliance, but also gain
and beyond - are now subject to some level ofsignificant strategic advantage.
regulation concerning the storage andSidebar: Email/ IM Policy Pointers
management of their electronic data. The FederalYours may be one of the many companies that
Rules of Civil Procedure, Sarbanes-Oxley, the U.S.has yet to establish its policy for email and IM use
Patriot Act, HIPAA, SEC rules, state laws, andand retention. The tips below offer guidance
corporate policies are all part of this dynamictoward that end.
regulatory environment.* DON'T make it an IT project. Your policy for
Email storage capacity and management.how email and IM will be used and retained by
Companies frequently limit the size of each user'syour company should be developed with input
mailbox to optimize email server performance.from across the organization. Give IT, legal, HR,
This forces users to spend time cleaning out theircompliance, customer relations, and administrative
mailboxes, which reduces their productivity.departments a seat at the policy planning table -
Allowing larger mailboxes, however, can severelyand make sure international divisions of the
affect the efficiency of the email server.company have a voice, too.
E-discovery. A nightly backup of a company's* DO create two policies: One for retention of
computer data is not the same as an archive.emails and IMs, and another for company-wide
One of the main differences is that to complyusage of email and IM. These will be separate
with most regulations, email messages, theirpolicies, but it's important that they're developed
attachments and IMs must be stored in theirside by side. Both should be reviewed and
original formats, and no one should have the abilityupdated annually.
to alter their content or delete them altogether.* DO communicate your usage policy with all
Unlike a backup, which is usually made at the endemployees, not just through email, but through
of each day and designed to restore emailface-to-face training and discussion in department
servers after a problem, the archive is created atmeetings. Be specific and detailed. It's important
the front end, before a message reaches the endthat everyone in the company understand both
user's computer, and stored in a non-rewriteableappropriate and inappropriate use of email and IM,
format.and that violating usage guidelines is a punishable
An archive is also fully searchable, greatlyoffence. Employees should also know that copies
simplifying the e-discovery process. For example,of everything they send are being archived. This
if Company X sues Company Y, lawyers typicallyknowledge alone often results in fewer instances
review all emails related to the case. With no emailof inappropriate messaging.
archive, discovery can take months of billable* DON'T delay archiving in the absence of a
hours by a team of lawyers and IT professionals.retention policy. Ideally, the policy comes first and
In contrast, the process can literally take minutesdictates the parameters of the archive setup. But
via keyword search of an email archive.for many companies, a policy can take months to
Corporate intelligence. As much as 75 percent ofdevelop and gain consensus - and most aren't
a company's intellectual property is housed withinwilling to risk a damaging noncompliance situation
its messaging system. More, users often refer toor costly e-discovery process in the meantime. A
old email when composing new email. An archiveflexible in-house archiving solution can easily be
offers a company access to a rich repository ofadapted as policy takes shape.
corporate knowledge through an easy-to-use