E-mail Archive

As the volume of corporate e-mail increases, the ability to quickly produce e-mails is critical to risk mitigation in all organizations, regardless of their regulatory requirements. Many organizations attempt to address this potential problem by backing up the e-mail server, but this strategy creates only a snapshot of items that haven't been deleted since the previous backup and generally isn't easily searchable. In a worst case scenario, in the event of litigation, failure to produce e-mails required as part of legal discovery in a timely manner could result in crippling fines or even jail time.

The OnBase E-mail Archive harnesses the inherent journaling capabilities of a Microsoft® Exchange Server to create a secure, searchable repository of every e-mail sent or received. E-mails and their attachments can be searched by a variety of criteria, such as sender, recipient or subject line, as well as for the occurrence of a specific word or phrase.

E-mail Archive restricts access to the repository based on defined user rights. System administrators may be able to search entire collections of documents, while individual users can be provided with specific e-mail collections or search results. Each message is stored once, so that if a manager sends an e-mail to ten of his employees, for example, there will not be 11 duplicate messages.

Application

Because of e-mail's expanding role as a business record, means of internal communication and factor in regulatory compliance, E-mail Archive is a fundamental requirement of any organization's  governance, risk and compliance initiative. For instance, an e-mail may not be seen as crucial to vendor/customer service at the time it is generated (and thus not saved by the user), but may be referred to later if there is a dispute over terms or other deliverables. Using E-mail Archive, every e-mail could be searched for a specific vendor, employee, date or virtually any other value.

One of the most overlooked threats to any organization is the actions of internal employees. Being able to prove that an employee violated intellectual property rights or took action in direct opposition with company policies can be virtually impossible if e-mail evidence is inadvertently lost. Failure to document e-mail correspondence between employees may also be a disadvantage if there are allegations of impropriety, such as sexual harassment.

Whether e-mail retention requirements are based on formal internal policies or specific regulations, such as the  Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Securities & Exchange Commission 17a-4, failure to appropriately retain e-mail according to prescribed procedures has serious consequences. E-mail Archive allows organizations to automatically create a comprehensive repository that can be retained according to individual organizational needs. It also provides a mechanism for auditors to conduct “spot checks” for non-compliant communication, such as a broker using the word “guarantee” when advising a client that an investment will deliver returns.

Core features

• Central data repository for all e-mails is more efficient and reliable

• Fast, easy retrieval of current and past e-mails

• Provides data retention and compliance to regulations

• Maintains information security

• Business-critical data maintained in a logical, retrievable manner