Email archiving. With the world moving to a new world of cloud-based email systems such as Office 365 and Google Workspace, you may ask: what actually is the purpose of email archiving? It’s a good question.
Unobtrusive yet ever present, email archiving tools are supposed to sit diligently to one side, meticulously saving all your emails (inbound, outbound, and internal) for later use. It plays an absolutely crucial role in sectors that require historic–and often sensitive–information to be stored for long periods of time. Not having to think about your email archiving solution is a sign that you’ve got a really good email archiving solution.
So, how did it come to be?
How Email Archiving Found Its Purpose
Like with most good inventions, email archiving was born out of necessity. The broad overview of the history of email archiving begins someone doing something they shouldn’t have done. One thing led to another, leading to a government call for a solution to be found to prevent instances of this happening again.
It all began when the Enron Corporation filed for bankruptcy in late 2001. It came to a shock to many in Wall Street, and indeed the wider business world, as Enron Corporation had long been considered a corporate giant and more or less financially stable. It had survived the Dot Com Bubble and the fiscal crises of the late 90s and early 00s. In truth, the company was struggling with severe debt, largely due to poor choices and the toll of economic uncertainty, as well as poor returns on their investments.
For a while, they had managed to conceal these details from creditors, investors by systematically deleting email chains and evidence, aided in part by their accounting company, Arthur Anderson. Leveraged and covered by what was initially widely regarded as a legitimate and well-respected accountancy firm, they sought to hide their losses as best as possible until the losses became too large and they had to declare bankruptcy.
From there, a criminal investigation was opened into exactly how all of this had happened. Arthur Anderson was found guilty of obstructing justice, for physically destroying evidence, as well as deleting almost 30,000 emails and files.
The case was eventually overturned on appeal, but Enron Corporation’s handling of their emails and data highlighted the dangers of companies tampering with records. It became clear that there was a need for organizations to be compelled to supply real and unchanged email content when requested by law enforcement. Paper trails in the form of email are just as valuable as letters themselves–and it was clear they were more easily forged or tampered with than their paper-based predecessors.
In July 2002, the then President of the United States, George W. Bush, introduced the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. This required all businesses and organizations to retain their digital records, which included all email communications, for a minimum of five years. Since then, other countries followed suit and a range of regulatory bodies have made differing retention requirements depending on the industry.
And so, email archiving was born, but what does that look like in practice?
How Does Email Archiving Work?
Email archiving is relatively straightforward in what it is and how it operates–it is able to store a large amount of information with an e-discovery function for when users need to find a specific record. Email archiving tools will capture email content by either directly saving it from the company’s email client itself or while the email is in transport (i.e., in the act of being sent or received).
This captured content can then be stored in the archive, where it will sit until the retention period has passed and the email can be automatically deleted. It can be retrieved at any point during this time frame if it has some vital information a user needs.
When the email needs to be accessed, the user will search for the email within the archive via the platform’s e-discovery tool. This is an advanced search bar, that allow users to search for an email within parameters, such as header content, body content, keywords, and time stamps. More advanced email archiving tools offer the ability to perform more refined searches, such as attachments, content of attachments, meta data, and more. Email archives are traditionally on-prem tools, but cloud email archiving tools are becoming ever more popular.
For more on email archiving and how it works, check out our blog here:
What Is The Purpose Of Email Archiving?
Archiving solutions will allow admins to tailor retention times depending on what the company needs and the details of legal framework within their industry. Generally, the standard requirement to save emails is seven years, but in some instances, it is preferable to store them for longer.
The e-discovery function of email archiving tools enables end-users, auditors, and admins find emails that have either been lost, deleted, or just missing. This feature is essential because, let’s face it, we get too many emails to keep track of.
Compliance
As has been suggested, there are a range of regulatory bodies that have requirements of how long a company ought to retain their email data for. This is important as email is the predominant means of communication in the world of business despite the prevalence of work apps and WhatsApp. As there’s so much (sensitive) data and information being swapped daily via email, there are a number of regulatory bodies making sure that this information stays protected.
Email archive solution providers can help organizations meet these requirements by offering tailored or customizable retention policies, securing and copying data, setting purge policies after retention times have passed, conducting e-discovery searches, and performing legal holds. Some of the regulatory bodies email archiving helps companies meet are the aforementioned Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, FDA, FINRA.
What should be noted here is that a lot of regulatory bodies require all forms of messaging and communication data to be archived in order for organizations to remain compliant. This extends to SMS messaging, work communication apps, phone calls, WhatsApp, and others. Not all email archiving solutions provide storage for these types of data, but more are starting to.
Legal Reasons
While rare, businesses will have to appear in court, either as defense, prosecuting, or as a witness, and when that happens, they will need to supply email trails as evidence.
Emails have to be stored in a secure, tamper-proof archive that ensures that, if the time comes, your team or an auditor can search and present carbon copies of original emails that pertain to a legal cases or investigation. Failing to supply unchanged or un-tampered emails (or any emails at all) is an offense in and of itself. The act of providing tampered emails is on par with stealing or providing misleading evidence at a crime scene–it is obstructing justice.
In addition to customizable retention policies, depending on what is required by law and regulations, email archiving solutions can export mass amounts of email data to aid auditors and investigators. An example would be that an auditor needs to go through a load of emails from a specific time period. Admins will be able to export these specific emails into a readable, downloadable format that is easy to open and browser, before sending it on to the auditor to perform their external review.
Storage Reasons
At the end of the day, we send a lot of emails. Emails are, more or less, the number one way for the business world to communicate. Our inboxes are bursting with email content and data–even after a single week of vacation. While they may be convenient, all of this email data takes up valuable storage space in company inboxes, and eventually they have to go somewhere as more space needs to be created for the newer emails.
So, email archiving helps in a more practical sense in that it frees up a lot of space and reduces the strain on company inboxes.
Email Backup And Storage Recovery
Accidents happen. Breaches and ransomware attacks happen. In both of these instances, it is critical that organizations are prepared to deal with possible data theft, the entire shutdown of email servers, and the locking of company networks during a ransomware attack.
Having an email archive that is secure and isolated from your main database is critical when it comes to protecting it from ransomware, breaches, and other forms of attack. Cloud email archives offer protection by using a third party to manage emails. The archives operate away from the company network, and will have their own security measure in place, possibly managed by an MSP. As such, in terms of a disaster recovery plan, having a strong email archiving solution in place is crucial. It will allow your organization to get back up and running as soon as possible.
It is worth noting that while email archiving is critical in helping with getting businesses back on line, email archiving does not save mirrored copies of the messaging server, meaning that in the wake of a disaster it won’t be able to assist in recreating user accounts and groups. However, email archiving is still an important and strong tool to incorporate into any disaster recovery program.
Summary
In sum, email archiving does serve a important purpose, even if this often goes unnoticed and unappreciated. Born out of necessity, and serving purpose since its inception, email archiving can aid companies with legal issues, and ensure your adhere to regulations and are compliant. They can assist with data and information retrieval through e-discovery tools, and safely store email data and help your organization get going again after a catastrophic ransomware attack or data breach and loss.
Email archiving has found its purpose in its simplicity. By not being overly complicated or more than a storage solution with a really good e-discovery function, email archiving tools can be incredibly helpful without being overly complicated or expensive to manage and run.
To find out more about our top 10 Email Archiving solutions, read our article here.
