How long should email be archived?
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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.

However, archiving e-mails is a rather complex process. According to the findings of Contoural Inc, a data and storage consulting firm, among the Fortune 500 companies, one-third in the sample saved all e-mail, one-third deleted some messages and one-third didn't know what to do.

The decision regarding how long emails should be archived by organizations hinges on several crucial factors. Some such considerations include:
  • A Starting Policy: Companies need a compact data retention policy to start of email archiving. The legal, IT and HR departments have to work jointly to develop an effective policy. Storage costs, effects on business productivity, privacy issues and litigation problems need to be considered in the policy. Also, it should require no action from the end user.
  • Prioritization of the needs of the organization:  
The following are the major concerns that determine how (or, what type of) archiving a company needs:
  1. The e-mails themselves: Single-instance storage stores only one copy of an e-mail sent to multiple recipients. If users send lots of internal messages with big attachments to dozens of colleagues, single-instance storage is effective.
  2. Journaling: This captures every incoming message, and then sends a copy to the end user's inbox.
  3. Backup: Even though a company has an archive server, it still needs to back up e-mail server.
  4. Corporate Growth: Companies should project several years out when considering storage requirements, particularly when they are fast adding employees.
  5. Time: In case emails just have to be stored for a long time, archiving in an open-source format like XML is a good idea. As a result of this, data remains unaffected, even in the face of mergers, acquisitions, technological changes and even corporate bankruptcy.
  6. Storage: Contoural has come up with a storage management calculator that estimates how long emails should be stored. This ensures, even ife-mail is stored on a company's fastest servers, but it doesn't have to be.. And once a message is a year old, it's time to move it to a tape library.
Apart from these considerations, spam mails as well as personal e-mails also form a part of an employee’s inbox. However, only one message out of 10 is a personal one. So, there is no point wasting time on weeding out the "where should we go for dinner" e-mails. Neither are spam mails an issue for archiving.
 
The retention period of emails is an extremely important decision that needs careful attention. In the modern corporate world of electronic document-focused discovery, instead of waiting for discovery requests to happen, IT organizations need to anticipate, understand and prepare for legal needs. Working closely together, Legal and IT can develop policies and strategies to become litigation ready. This proactive approach leads to less disruption, more defensible discovery and lower costs. A few further points must also be mulled over by organizations before coming to a decision regarding the email-retention period. These include:
  1. Policy of Data Retirement: Organizations need to implement a layered approach to data security to ensure that data is deleted completely, actions are audited and logged, and equipment is retired in accordance to policies.
  2. E-discovery of emails: The lack of preparedness of companies drives up the cost of e-discovery of electronically stored information (ESI), and the cost of litigation in general.
  3. Electronic Records Retention and Destruction Program: many companies find it difficult to translate policies and requirements to electronically stored information (ESI) such as e-mail messages and electronic document files. In such a scenario, an effective email retention policy is required.
  4. Management of ESI under FRCP norms: Litigation always, has been, and will continue to be, a core element of doing business. This factor also has a huge role to play in deciding how long an email should stay.
  5. Legal Requirements: From an IT viewpoint, companies must examine the reality of records retention and email archiving, focusing on the process of developing an effective retention policy and automating solutions to enforce rules and satisfy retention obligations.
  6. Litigation Readiness: The courts recognize that electronic data as a form of business record, which requires special handling. In order to be ready in case it is sued, a company must carefully preserve its e-documents.
  7. Intelligent data storage: The email retention policy of any company must be such that it ensures compliance, reduce liability and meet business needs.
  8. Affordability of data-retention: In-house email-archiving is, on the whole, an expensive process. Organizations need to first determine whether they can indeed afford to archive emails, before deciding on retention periods.
  9. These factors, along with a suitable email archiving policy, are of the utmost importance in deciding how long emails should be preserved.

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