3.1 How do you prove an email’s integrity?
Cryoserver is configured to ensure that each and every email sent or received by a company (including internal email) is captured. As each message arrives at Cryoserver a digital fingerprint of the entire message is taken which is recorded with the message in an encrypted and compressed format. If a message is retrieved from Cryoserver its digital fingerprint is recalculated (after it has been uncompressed and decrypted) and this is compared with the digital fingerprint recorded when the message was received. It is therefore possible to prove the content of a message has not been tampered with in any way since it was received.
3.2 What levels of access are there to Cryoserver:
There are 3 levels of search access to the system:
- Basic users can search through the Cryoserver repository for their own e-mails.
- Privileged users can search the entire repository3) Administrative users have no access to the e-mail itself, but can manage accounts.
3.3 What about viruses? Can they attack Cryoserver and destroy the archive?
Cryoserver is not a mail server, it’s an audit system – so emails are simply stored without being ‘opened’ in such a way that a virus could be activated or passed on. Cryoserver treats all messages as streams of bytes and so a virus has no opportunity of executing. Cryoserver can be used to determine where an email virus originated.
3.4 How do you stop viruses re-infecting the system if you forward them out of Cryoserver at a later date?
The company’s Anti Virus software will intercept the email message if it is sent out of Cryoserver and remove/delete the virus as it does with standard email messages entering the mail server.
3.5 Can Cryoserver be set to not allow attachments to be opened in the Cryoserver environment (browser)?
Currently a user who has access to an email also has full rights to open any attachments that might be contained in it. A future enhancement will provide the option to deny users the right to open attachments.
3.6 What about encrypted attachments?
Encrypted attachments will be stored in their original format, but the index of the document will, obviously, be incomplete. If the encrypted attachment is part of an email that is forwarded to a user, then he or she will need to have access to the encryption key to be able to open it.
3.7 What about password-protected Word documents?
Cryoserver stores and indexes password-protected word documents correctly. If a user attempts to open such a document they will be prompted for the password before they are able to read it.
3.8 What about unknown attachments?
Cryoserver correctly stores any form of email message and attachment. Some forms of attachment are not well suited to indexing (for example gif files), but we are constantly adding filters to process specific types of attachment more effectively.
3.9 We have 100 Exchange Servers placed all over the world – how would you set up Cryoserver and how do you avoid duplication?
Cryoserver has been designed so that it can be implemented in a variety of configurations to ensure it meets customer requirements. When configuring a solution for multiple mail servers, a number of factors need to be taken into account including regulatory requirements, numbers of users in different locations and network bandwidth. In any event messages will only be stored once per mail server – this proves that a message actually reached its intended destination.
3.10 Can we use a different search engine?
Cryoserver uses a modular design, which means that different components can be substituted for those in the standard design. It is therefore possible to use a different search engine (for example Verity), although this is likely to result in an increased cost.
3.11 Is this going to be working in thirty years time?
Cryoserver has been designed using best-of-breed modular components to be very scalable and so there is no reason to doubt that Cryoserver will be around for many years. However, whilst Cryoserver will evolve over time, the basic design is very solid and it uses standard data formats, which means that it will always be possible to extract data from a Cryoserver data repository, should that become necessary.
3.12 What disaster recovery / business continuity provisions are there in the product?
Cryoserver has been designed with disaster tolerance in mind and it is possible to configure Cryoserver so that it replicates every message received to a remote location as it arrives. This option is provided as standard with no additional cost (apart from the additional hardware). In addition, hardware configurations are implemented with high availability in mind, for example, raid-5 at a minimum.
3.13 If we later moved from Cryoserver to another product, can this be achieved and is it easy?
Corporate Internet would provide assistance in extracting messages from a Cryoserver data repository into a standard message format if that became necessary. This service would be provided at the standard prevailing consultancy rates at that time.
3.14 Can Cryoserver be backed up?
Whilst it is generally preferable to replicate a Cryoserver (‘mirrored configuration’) to a remote location, we recognise that this is not always possible. In these cases, we provide sample template scripts for backing up the Cryoserver data repository. Please note that the data is encrypted and would only be accessible from a Cryoserver configured with the same key encryption data, which would be only be available from Corporate Internet.
3.15 What happens if Cryoserver is unavailable?
Most mail servers provide the facility to ‘journal’ copies of emails to Cryoserver as they are received. Other mail servers require a ‘collector’ to make a connection and to extract emails (which are protected from deletion until they have been retrieved). In either event, messages will be retained on the mail server until the Cryoserver service is restored.
3.16 Can Cryoserver mail collection be scheduled to take advantage of quiet times re. bandwidth?
Cryoserver is intended to capture all email messages as they arrive at the mail server. This means that all messages will be secured in the Cryoserver repository and available for users in the event of a failure of the mail server. It also provides the best possible compliance solution. This means that we do not consider that is advisable to only copy emails out of hours, although we do recognise that this has bandwidth implications.
3.17 Does Cryoserver spot spoofed emails?
Cryoserver is designed to record every email message and accompanying metadata (e.g. smtp mail headers). This metadata can be use to review the route that a mail message took to get to your mail server and assess whether the mail might be spoofed.
3.18 If an index becomes corrupted, can it be rebuilt?
In the unlikely event of an index becoming corrupted, we have software tools to rebuild the indexes. Note that email data and indexes are both stored in monthly directories, which means that the worst-case scenario is to have to rebuild a month’s data. If this ever becomes necessary, Corporate Internet would provide the service under our standard support and maintenance contract at no charge to the customer.
3.19 What about web-based email – can you capture it?
It is possible to configure web-based mail servers to automatically forward copies of emails to Cryoserver where they will be processed in the same way as all other email messages.
3.20 Can you capture instant messaging?
We recognise the growing importance of Instant Messaging and expect to provide support for capturing Instant Messages in a future release of Cryoserver.
3.21 Are you developing an interface that will be transparent to the user? E.g. it’ll look like they’re always in Outlook?
It is possible to create an icon in outlook, which will automatically connect to Cryoserver. An optional ‘single-signon facility’ will be included in the next release of Cryoserver which will mean that users do not have to enter username and password details when connecting to Cryoserver if they have already logged on to the network. We plan further integration with Outlook, and other mail interfaces in future releases.
3.22 How do you define a ‘user’ when costing – many of our users have multiple email addresses?
We have a very straightforward way of counting users, which is the number of employees who have access to email in a company. We do not count people who have left a company, nor take into account multiple email addresses or generic accounts.
3.23 How is mirroring implemented?
The ‘storage director’ component of Cryoserver will automatically copy all email messages to two ‘storage manager’ components running in separate servers (which can be located in the same server room, or separated by several miles).
3.24 Can the data be exported and consolidated into one interface, e.g. including faxes?
Cryoserver processes all types of email messages, which include faxes if they are transmitted internally using email.
3.25 Our Notes email system has encryption switched on by default – can you index and/or read these messages?
Cryoserver cannot index messages that are encrypted (this would defeat the object of encrypting them), but it stores all email messages in the format that they are sent/received. It is important that encryption is covered by a company’s email policy to ensure that only authorised people are able to send encrypted mail messages.
3.26 Can Cryoserver index e.g. Scandinavian characters?
Cryoserver has been implemented using Unicode, which means that it handles Scananavian, and other character sets transparently.
3.27 Can it record calendar entries?
Cryoserver can record calendar entries if these are copied by email.
3.28 What about when email access rights are delegated to another person in the company when e.g. the original person is on holiday – can Cryoserver do this?
It is possible to create accounts in Cryoserver to provide this functionality (‘delegated access’). A future release will provide this functionality transparently using the rights in the Active Directory.
3.29 How do you get old email into Cryoserver?
Legacy mail can be loaded into Cryoserver, although it is not regarded as forensically compliant, since we have no record of what happened to the mail before it reached Cryoserver, nor whether it is a complete record. The method of importing data depends on the mail server. For example, Microsoft Exchange messages are imported using a PST reader.
3.30 Can you see/audit bcc’s?
Cryoserver captures bcc information from the most recent mail server products (Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, Novell GroupWise etc.) and a privileged user whose access will be fully audited in the normal way can view this information.
3.31 What are you doing regarding long-term storage?
We believe that Serial ATA storage is an ideal medium for long-term data due to its excellent cost-effectiveness. Higher performing storage will continue to be used for more recent data due to its higher I/O requirements.
3.32 What if distribution lists are not held in LDAP?
If distribution list expansion is a requirement and distribution lists are not maintained in LDAP, then it this can be achieved by requiring the mail server to expand the distribution lists before journalling to Cryoserver.
3.33 What if there are several different entry points for emails in different countries?
It is possible for multiple mail servers to journal to a single Cryoserver system and this will form a single data repository. Alternatively, it is possible to configure multiple Cryoservers in different locations, depending upon factors such as the number of users in different locations, network bandwidth and regulatory requirements.
3.34 Can you search by country?
If it is a requirement to restrict searches by geography, then this can be accomplished by configuring Cryoserver systems for each country. Alternatively, it is possible to design a Cryoserver solution such that data from each country is stored in a separate repository on one Cryoserver.
3.35 Do you search across all Cryoservers, or just one at a time?
Currently searching is restricted to a single Cryoserver and this is partly to ensure that regulatory requirements regarding data access across country borders are complied with. A future release of Cryoserver will provide the ability to search across multiple Cryoserver systems simultaneously where this does not breach any regulatory requirements.
3.36 Can privileged users be restricted to carrying out certain searches? E.g. only allowed to search a particular date range, or ‘finance’ can only search ‘finance’ employees?
The next release of Cryoserver will provide different interfaces for different types of user, which will ensure that only authorized searches are carried out. Of course there will also be a full audit trail of all such activity.