Email Archiving

The systematic way of saving data in e-mails so that they can be easily accessed later is known as e-mail archiving. Earlier companies had to rely on the end-users maintaining their own individual e-mail archives. But today's compliance legislation and legal discovery rules has made it necessary for IT departments of companies to maintain e-mail archives in such a way that a particular mail can be found within minutes.

Email archiving is basically a stand-alone IT application that works with the help of the email server for managing the email messages. All email traffic, inbound or outbound passes through it and a person who has the authority can access it later when and if the need arises from a location that is centrally managed. The need may be for an internal investigation or it may be due to a court order for legal discovery, and in such cases company’s search through the archive using tools that belong to this system for archiving emails.

Can employees have access to archived emails?

Yes it is important to archive emails, but it is also important to retrieve them when the need arises. However, there is a common misconception among employees that they cannot have access to an email that has been archived. But this is not the case. The purpose of archiving the email and not deleting it permanently is to get access to it when there is a need, and so, the employee (if he is given the permission) can indeed access the archived email. When the need arises all he has to do is to make a request through the proper channels and the administrator will then give the employee the access he needs. But he will have limited access (to just the database he needs).

There are quite a number of e-mail archiving tools that are available in the market – so that companies have a range of choices from which they can select the system they ideally require. It is extremely important to know, while evaluating one particular system, how well it's suited to the specific requirements of the email system it's intended to protect.

There are two principle avenues for email archiving – “hosted” systems and in-house email archiving systems.  A "hosted" system is basically an archiving system that is contracted through an outside company. It's an outside service that connects into a company’s email server(s) and captures email as they come through -- moving and storing emails offsite at a remote location.

Archiving tools, in the present day corporate world, range from those that capture only emails and attachments to those that can store non-mail data as well. Hence, using email archiving (EMA), companies can literally snoop into what employees are saying to one another. Workplace email and communications of a personal nature among employees is deemed to be confidential, and hence, should not be pried upon by EMA tools. While employers have every right to archive business-related emails, the US laws clearly state that no personal mails or communications can be captured without the permission or knowledge of the concerned person. However, there are a few exceptions to this law, i.e., those subject to FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), e.g, potential terrorists. In fact, the laws ensure that, it is illegal to look into personal emails of employees on the sly, even though it is pefectly alright to use the archiving tools for business purposes.

Archived emails – the importance of giving access to employees

Allowing users to see their own archived emails also reduces the risk of an important file or email getting corrupted, or, worse being deleted altogether. Even old mails can be searched for, in the inboxes stored on the Exchange folder. There is no additional data protection issue either, because employees can use these features with their existing anti-virus and/or anti-spam applications.

Such advanced archiving tools generally have a simple browser interface that is extremely user-friendly. Hence, there rarely occurs any need for external plug-ins or installation of other additional applications. These software products fully comply with relevant laws, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley and SEC.

The archiving and storage requirements of present-day companies are growing more and more complex, and hence, email archive tools have to be correspondingly designed. Most organisations critically need to store the high volumes of e-mail running efficiently through their systems. The underlying IT infrastructure requires messaging as an integral component in most environments. Indeed, EMA-s has become so popular recently that decision-makers describe such systems as the single most important communication and business application within their operation.

While a number of email archiving systems are available to the present-day employers, he can use those only for business related purposes. Barring a few exceptions, the personal mail messages of employees cannot be looked into without the latters’ prior permission. Also, using advanced archiving tools (like the ITA Mail Archive); users/employees can actually search, view or even retrieve their own archived emails.