LONDON - Emails are quickly becoming the primary source of communication for businesses. As this reliance increases, so does the volume of inbound and outbound messages.
With limited storage space, government regulations and potential legal implications, businesses need to decide on an email archiving strategy: delete all, keep some or keep all, says Robin Bingeman of Cryoserver, an email archiving appliance that offers email backup.
"Within the organization, there can be several varying perspectives on email archiving and email management software," said Bingeman. "Everyone from legal and IT to employees and the compliance team has an opinion. No matter where you fall, your first course of action is to implement email archival software because you never know when or which email will be needed at a future date." According to Bingeman, there are three options: delete all, keep some, or keep all.
Delete All
An email sent between two people means there are always two copies. If you delete your copy, but the other party keeps theirs, you could have a real problem. If you are relying on an email as evidence and you have deleted your copy, then the other party could tamper or edit the content to say something different, said Bingeman. If their altered email is submitted as evidence and you do not have your copy, you will have a more difficult time proving what was actually said in the original email.
Non-regulated companies still have to adhere to certain regulatory requirements. Company financials need to be kept for six years and in some cases, for more than 21 years. In this instance, delete all is not an option that would benefit you or the company, said Bingeman.
Keep Some
There are two ways to go about this: manually or automatically. Manual sorting can be very expensive in terms productivity cost per employee, not to mention policy-based storage tools can make mistakes. That makes this process time-consuming and non-compliant. Automatic storage is not possible with emails because they are considered unstructured documents. There is no method on the market that allows for accurate sorting of emails.
Keep Everything
This is the best option, says Bingeman. As stated earlier, when you delete an email it does not erase all traces of that communication; at least one recipient has a copy. Keeping a copy of every email ensures that your own email will not be used against you.
With the keep everything archiving option, organizations can protect corporate data, locate specific content quickly, have an account of important communications, manage the lifecycle of data and furnish any emails in question in the event of litigation. "Most people assume that keeping everything will be expensive," said Bingeman. "That is not the case. It is generally much more cost-effective to store emails rather than have users manually do it. So keep everything to save yourself and your employees some time."
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