ComplyKey Control

Overview

ComplyKey is an integrated compliance provider that specializes in archiving and compliance solutions for both public and private sector organizations. ComplyKey Control is their email archiving solution, which provides granular eDiscovery functionality and storage management alongside its robust archiving capabilities. ComplyKey Control was designed to support organizations that need to perform regular, granular searching and analysis of their users’ email activity for compliance purposes. With both cloud and on-premises deployment options available, high levels of automation, and a 24/7 support team, ComplyKey Control is a strong, highly scalable solution for SMBs and enterprises alike.

Key Features

Search And eDiscovery

ComplyKey Control offers highly granular, conditional search functionality that allows admins to search email body, subject, attachment name, and attachment content for specific terms. Archived data is stored separately in modules, so search results are returned quickly. Admins can configure access policies that specify which users should be allowed to access which information in the archive to achieve compliance with data protection regulations, e.g., that not all users can search for information in BCC-sent emails.

Data Retention

ComplyKey Control offers two types of retention. The first is based on groups and periods, so admins can set different retention periods for specific user groups. The platform offers automatic conflict resolution to manage conflicting retention periods. The second type is based on labels and tags, i.e., on the content and characteristics of an email. When using labels and tags, admins can also filter what appears in search results according to tags, such as hiding emails containing credit card information. This functionality is sophisticated, and elevated the solution from offering traditional archiving, to enabling it to provide eDiscovery for compliance.

Export Management

From the Export Management tab, admins can export search results and customize them in terms of page size, format, and body type. Admins can also redact content from exports so they’re fit for sharing.

Auditing

All records are fully tamper-proof—they can be used as evidence in a court of law. All actions carried out on records are logged, for example, if a record containing personal information is deleted after the person concerned leaves the company. Every click in every session within ComplyKey Control is recorded in a comprehensive audit trail, which can be found within the Session Details tab. These records include the date, application, action, notes, and details of each activity.

Filters And Tagging

From the Edit Plan tab, admins can schedule regular reviews of new emails and configure automatic tagging of those emails. ComplyKey Control can also generate reports of new emails and tags and send them on schedule to the compliance officer. This is a particularly useful feature for larger enterprises that need to be able to review and categorize lots of emails, quickly. ComplyKey Control also offers real-time filtering, in which the platform analyzes all emails being imported to the archive and classifies them to ensure no emails are breaching compliance requirements by sitting where they shouldn’t, or being accessed by someone they shouldn’t.

Ease Of Use

ComplyKey Control is hosted in Azure and designed to integrate seamlessly into Microsoft 365 environments, Exchange, Google Workspace, and IceWarp for search and discovery. This makes it very easy to set up journalling in Microsoft 365 so that all new, live emails are automatically stored in the archive. The platform also supports PST imports, for ease of importing legacy data at the user’s mailbox level. The platform offers high levels of technical functionality through the browser-based dashboard and Outlook plugin, but the user interface is dated. This means configuring policies can be complex and requires a degree of technical understanding. However, ComplyKey’s technical consultants offer in-depth support during deployment, tailoring the solution to your business’s specific requirements to ensure that everything is set up correctly. They also offer ongoing support and maintenance post-deployment.

Best Suited For

ComplyKey Control is not just an archiving product; it has a prominent focus on eDiscovery and compliance, offering granular search, discovery, and analysis functionality, as well as comprehensive auditing of all activity carried out within the archive. As such, it’s well suited to public sector organizations that must comply with strict data protection regulations—such as GDPR, PCI-DSS, HIPAA—or complex data retention periods. Because of its easy integrations with Microsoft 365, ComplyKey Control is best suited to organizations operating within a MS365 environment. ComplyKey Control is cost-effective, and comes with an excellent customer support offering, but it’s also highly scalable and offers deep levels of technical functionality. Because of this, ComplyKey Control is a strong solution for SMBs of 100+ users, as well as large enterprises.

Final Verdict

ComplyKey Control is a highly sophisticated tool for eDiscovery and compliance management—it is not a traditional email archiving product. On top of its encrypted, deduplicated, tamperproof archive, ComplyKey Control offers granular configurations for policies such as data retention, in-depth search functionality with fast search results, role-based archive access, customizable exports of search results, comprehensive auditing trails, and automated tagging of new emails.
This is a very powerful, scalable tool, which—thanks to ComplyKey excellent customer support offering—can be utilized by SMBs and enterprises alike to prove compliance with highly regulated data protection standards. We recommend that any sized organization looking to fulfil these requirements consider adding MailMeter to their product shortlist.