E-mail archiving
Encyclopedia
Email archiving is a stand-alone IT application that integrates with an enterprise email
server, such as Microsoft Exchange
or Lotus Domino. In addition to simply accumulating email messages, these applications index and provide quick, searchable access to archived messages independent of the users of the system using a couple of different technical methods of implementation. The reasons a company may opt to implement an email archiving solution include protection of mission critical data, record retention for regulatory requirements or litigation, and reducing production email server load. Email archiving stores emails in their original format which, in order to meet compliance regulations, cannot be altered.
A study produced by Radicati Group in October 2009 estimated the world-wide market for email
archiving marketing will grow from nearly $2.1 billion in 2009 to over $5.1 billion in 2013
Solution approaches come in three general categories:
In addition to email and attachments, some email archiving applications can also archive additional aspects of a mailbox including public folders, .pst
files, calendars, contacts, notes, and associated metadata
and context.
Several of the primary legal compliance requirements are defined by (alphabetical):
Canada
Germany
Switzerland
United Kingdom
United States
Note, that many of the compliance regulations require the preservation of "electronic business communications" which consist of not only email, but may include instant messaging, file attachments, Bloomberg Messaging, Reuters Messaging, PIN-to-PIN and SMS text messages, VoIP and other electronic messaging communications used in business.
Without email archiving, email likely exists on some combination of backup tapes and on end users’ local workstations. If a specific email needs to be found for an internal investigation or in response to litigation, it can take weeks to find and costs a great deal. With today’s legal discovery rules (see FRCP: http://www.uscourts.gov/rules/EDiscovery_w_Notes.pdf) and compliance legislations, it has become necessary for IT departments to centrally manage and archive their organization’s email, so email can be searched and found in minutes; not days or weeks.
In the e-commerce arena, employees must have access to email to close sales and to manage accounts. These types of employees, plus many other types, often want to keep their emails indefinitely, but some organizations mandate that emails more than 90 days old be deleted. Deleting older emails is foolish because the one email that might help a company win a law suit might be nonexistent. Also, any email that is successfully delivered has two copies, the sender and the recipient. Any email sent or received outside the company will probably still exist, even if the company has deleted it on their own side.
, etc.). As the size of these messages increase, simple operations such as retrieving, searching, indexing, backup, etc. take utilize more information system resources. At some point older data must be removed from the production email system so that they can maintain a level of performance for their primary use, exchange of email messages. Email archiving solutions improve email server performance and storage efficiency by removing email and attachments from the messaging server based on administrator defined policies. Archived email and attachments remain accessible to end users via the existing email client applications.
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
server, such as Microsoft Exchange
Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft Exchange Server is the server side of a client–server, collaborative application product developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Servers line of server products and is used by enterprises using Microsoft infrastructure products...
or Lotus Domino. In addition to simply accumulating email messages, these applications index and provide quick, searchable access to archived messages independent of the users of the system using a couple of different technical methods of implementation. The reasons a company may opt to implement an email archiving solution include protection of mission critical data, record retention for regulatory requirements or litigation, and reducing production email server load. Email archiving stores emails in their original format which, in order to meet compliance regulations, cannot be altered.
A study produced by Radicati Group in October 2009 estimated the world-wide market for email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
archiving marketing will grow from nearly $2.1 billion in 2009 to over $5.1 billion in 2013
Definition
Email archiving is a systematic approach to saving and protecting the data contained in email messages so it can be accessed quickly at a later date.Overview
Email Archiving is the process of capturing, preserving, and making easily searchable all email traffic to and from a given individual, organization, or service. Email archiving solutions capture email content either directly from the email application itself or during transport. The messages are typically then stored on magnetic disk storage and indexed to simplify future searches.Solution approaches come in three general categories:
- Dedicated appliancesComputer applianceA computer appliance is generally a separate and discrete hardware device with integrated software , specifically designed to provide a specific computing resource. These devices became known as "appliances" because of their similarity to home appliances, which are generally "closed and sealed" –...
installed on the internal network - Packaged softwareComputer softwareComputer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....
installed on the internal network, leveraging existing shared storage hardware - Software as a serviceSoftware as a ServiceSoftware as a service , sometimes referred to as "on-demand software," is a software delivery model in which software and its associated data are hosted centrally and are typically accessed by users using a thin client, normally using a web browser over the Internet.SaaS has become a common...
In addition to email and attachments, some email archiving applications can also archive additional aspects of a mailbox including public folders, .pst
.pst
In computing, a Personal Storage Table is an open proprietary file format used to store copies of messages, calendar events, and other items within Microsoft software such as Microsoft Exchange Client, Windows Messaging, and Microsoft Outlook...
files, calendars, contacts, notes, and associated metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
and context.
Objectives of Email Archiving
There are many motivations for enterprises or end-users to invest in an Email Archiving solution, including:- Regulatory compliance
- Litigation and Legal Discovery
- Email backup and disaster recovery
- Messaging system & storage optimization
- Monitoring of internal and external email content (Email retention policy)
Regulatory Compliance
As industry and government alike grow continually more reliant on information system, particularly email, these information become more valuable. To protect this valuable information, standards and government regulations have been enacted that require certain retention and timely response to legal and information queries. A proper email archiving system allows companies to meet regulatory, and/or business records retention requirements by enabling compliance officers to easily search email stored in the archive and perform periodic reviews.Several of the primary legal compliance requirements are defined by (alphabetical):
Canada
- Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IDA)Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of CanadaThe Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, abbreviated IIROC in English or Organisme canadien de réglementation du commerce des valeurs mobilières in French, is a non-profit, national self-regulatory organization...
29.7 - PIPEDA
Germany
- GDPdU
Switzerland
- Schweizerische Obligationenrecht, article 962
United Kingdom
- British Standards Institution - BS 4783, BS 7799/ISO 17799, BS ISO 15489-1, BSI DISC PD 0008, BSI DISC PD0010, BSI DISC PD0012
- Data Protection Act 1998
- Freedom of Information Act 2000Freedom of Information Act 2000The Freedom of Information Act 2000 is an Act of Parliament of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that creates a public "right of access" to information held by public authorities. It is the implementation of freedom of information legislation in the United Kingdom on a national level...
United States
- FDA Title 21 CFR Part 11Title 21 CFR Part 11Title 21 CFR Part 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations deals with the Food and Drug Administration guidelines on electronic records and electronic signatures in the United States...
- Federal Rules of Civil ProcedureFederal Rules of Civil ProcedureThe Federal Rules of Civil Procedure govern civil procedure in United States district courts. The FRCP are promulgated by the United States Supreme Court pursuant to the Rules Enabling Act, and then the United States Congress has 7 months to veto the rules promulgated or they become part of the...
(FRCP) - Freedom of Information ActFreedom of Information Act (United States)The Freedom of Information Act is a federal freedom of information law that allows for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the United States government. The Act defines agency records subject to disclosure, outlines mandatory disclosure...
- Gramm-Leach-Bliley ActGramm-Leach-Bliley ActThe Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act , also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, is an act of the 106th United States Congress...
- HFTA (Hedge Fund Transparency Act)
- HIPAA
- Investment Advisors Act
- NASDNASDNASD may refer to:*National Agricultural Safety Database, maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention*National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers, a British trade union...
Rule 3110 and NYSE Rule 440 - Sarbanes-Oxley
- SB 1386SB 1386SB1386, amending civil codes 1798.29, 1798.82 and 1798.84 is a California law regulating the privacy of personal information. The law was introduced by California State Senator Peace on February 12, 2002, and became operative July 1, 2003....
(Only in California) - Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 17a-4SEC Rule 17a-4SEC Rule 17a-4 is part of the US Securities Exchange Act of 1934 which outlines requirements for data retention, indexing, and accessibility for companies which deal in the trade or brokering of financial securities such as stocks, bonds, and futures...
and SEC Rule 17a-3 - The USA Patriot ActUSA PATRIOT ActThe USA PATRIOT Act is an Act of the U.S. Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001...
Note, that many of the compliance regulations require the preservation of "electronic business communications" which consist of not only email, but may include instant messaging, file attachments, Bloomberg Messaging, Reuters Messaging, PIN-to-PIN and SMS text messages, VoIP and other electronic messaging communications used in business.
Litigation and Legal Discovery
For legal discovery, email archiving solutions will lower overall risk of spoliation and greatly speed up the discovery function because of their message indexing, audit capabilities, deduplication and protection of all email messages stored in the archive. For litigation support, email can be retrieved quickly and a history of the email exists to prove its authenticity for chain of custody. For compliance support, email records are stored in the archive according to administrator defined retention policies. When retention periods expire, email is automatically deleted by the archiving application.Without email archiving, email likely exists on some combination of backup tapes and on end users’ local workstations. If a specific email needs to be found for an internal investigation or in response to litigation, it can take weeks to find and costs a great deal. With today’s legal discovery rules (see FRCP: http://www.uscourts.gov/rules/EDiscovery_w_Notes.pdf) and compliance legislations, it has become necessary for IT departments to centrally manage and archive their organization’s email, so email can be searched and found in minutes; not days or weeks.
Email backup and disaster recovery
In order to survive, most enterprises today depend on high volumes of email running efficiently through their systems. Virtually all enterprises require that messaging be a part of the underlying IT infrastructure. Many decision-makers describe systems such as Microsoft’s Exchange as the single most important communication and business application within their operation.In the e-commerce arena, employees must have access to email to close sales and to manage accounts. These types of employees, plus many other types, often want to keep their emails indefinitely, but some organizations mandate that emails more than 90 days old be deleted. Deleting older emails is foolish because the one email that might help a company win a law suit might be nonexistent. Also, any email that is successfully delivered has two copies, the sender and the recipient. Any email sent or received outside the company will probably still exist, even if the company has deleted it on their own side.
Messaging system & storage optimization
Every email message takes up space on a email system's hard drive or some other permanent storage device (e.g. Network Attached Storage, Storage Area NetworkStorage area network
A storage area network is a dedicated network that provides access to consolidated, block level data storage. SANs are primarily used to make storage devices, such as disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical jukeboxes, accessible to servers so that the devices appear like locally attached devices...
, etc.). As the size of these messages increase, simple operations such as retrieving, searching, indexing, backup, etc. take utilize more information system resources. At some point older data must be removed from the production email system so that they can maintain a level of performance for their primary use, exchange of email messages. Email archiving solutions improve email server performance and storage efficiency by removing email and attachments from the messaging server based on administrator defined policies. Archived email and attachments remain accessible to end users via the existing email client applications.
External links
- Magic Quadrant for E-Mail Active Archiving @ Gartner
- Best Practices: Email Archiving by Forrester Research
- Booming Archiving Market to Evolve Beyond E-mail @ www.internetnews.com