You Invested Everything to Own and Build a Business, Now You Owe it to Yourself to Invest in an Email Archiving Solution

You have likely invested alot time, money and effort into your dream of owning your own business.  Now, you owe it to yourself to protect that business by investing in the security of your content information.  You need to invest in an email archiving solutions.

What is an Email Archiving Solution?  This is a technique or method of saving or storing all of your incoming and outgoing emails and other pertinent data.  There are many small business email archiving solutions, few of them are:

1. A virtual device used on your virtual infrastructure
2. An off-site solution that resides in the Cloud
3. An on-site hardware appliance

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons WHY this solution is important for your business.

1. It’s The Law

In December 2006 the Federal Regulations on Civil Procedures (FRCP), mandated that companies must be prepared for electronic discovery of emails, financial information, and other data.  Businesses like banks and mortgage companies have strict federal guidelines for storing email communications for a minimum of 7 years, and you may be required to do the same.  The FRCP applies to any company or organization that may have the potential to be involved in litigation in the U.S. Federal Court system.

If your business is required to follow the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) laws, then you are required to use an archiving appliance specifically for legal court issues.  These laws are very serious and archiving your data on a proper appliance will give you the peace of mind you need in protecting your investment.  It’s vital to know where your business data is stored, how you can retrieve the information on a moments notice, how to meet data requests, and how to determine what data will not be subject to search.

2. When You Need to Retrieve Emails Quickly

Many businesses back up their data, copy/paste emails into word programs, or download their financials into bookkeeping programs or spreadsheets.  However, backing up your data is not enough if you find yourself in court with a subpoena in hand.  Backing up your data does not allow for the indexing necessary to retrieve specific information.  Generally, if you want to retrieve the information you have backed up, you are basically only able to retrieve a copy of the information from the day before or a best, maybe a week.  Most businesses that back up their information use the same flash drive, or removable device that they use over and over again.  They are often unprotected and can be copied over, or misplaced/lost, or worse stolen, and they often fail which means the data is gone forever.

Archiving your emails, financials, and other critical data on a virtual appliance or in the Cloud allows for on-demand of a precise topic.  For instance, broken out by restricted dates, emails to/from an individual person or company, or even by attachments.  The search criteria can be separated by a variety of different subjects.

Archiving isn’t just for court situations, it can be useful in your everyday business affairs.  If you wanted to do mass emails to a certain group of people, or a certain type of company, you could organize the process by selecting a specific set predetermined criteria.

3. The Effects on Your Business

Organizations and businesses that do not have an automated backup system in place will find themselves in more trouble than it’s worth if they wind up in a lawsuit.  Effectively storing your emails and records will allow for searches and retrievals in real-time to be painless. Without properly archiving you could end up paying thousands of dollars in attorney fees for discovery procedures. If you were unable to produce requested detailed data to a federal court, on time, you run the risk of potentially losing a lawsuit that you likely could have won.  A little forethought now will offer peace of mind in the future, and will likely save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

Protect yourself and your business by visiting our contact us page so we can help make sure your business is protected and compliant.

Related Resources

The Difference Between Email Archiving and Email Backups

Email Archiving and Sarbanes-Oxley

Azam Qureshi

Azam is the president, chief technology officer and co-founder of Intradyn. He oversees global sales and marketing, new business development and is responsible for leading all aspects of the company’s product vision and technology department.