E-discovery has taken over from DNA as the most popular form of evidence in trials. The prevalence, and importance of email is our personal and professional lives is well known. That makes it fertile ground for litigation and the gathering of evidence. Email archiving makes the gathering of evidence in this way possible.

E-discovery is the method by which lawyers can request email information from companies to aid an investigation. Email archiving is mandated by law for just this reason. There are several things any business needs to know about e-discovery, and we’re going to discuss them here.

E-discovery applies to any electronically stored information (ESI). That includes social media, Instant Messaging, chat, and email. An email archive solution should include all ESI to fully comply. As new electronic communication methods evolve, the solution will have to include those too.

Alongside email data, instant messages and social media, ESI can also include databases, email attachments, email headers, and even metadata within an electronic document. A solid email archive should be able to store data in its original format, without destroying any of this data.

The main piece of legislation for civil cases is the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP). It outlines obligations under the rules to assist in bringing cases to court. The rules are numerous, but there are three main rules that are useful to know.

They are:

• Rule 26 General Provisions Governing Discovery; Duty of Disclosure. This rule outlines the process for discovery including exemptions to the discovery process and a meeting between parties to discuss the organization of the process.
• Rule 34 – Production of Documents, Electronically Stored Information, and Things and Entry Upon Land for Inspection and Other Purposes. The main rule relating to e-discovery.
• Rule 37 – Failure to Make Disclosures or Cooperate in Discovery; Sanctions. This rule states the court cannot sanction the responding party for failing to provide ESI that was lost as a result of routine computer operations.

It would be useful for any business operating in the US to know each of these three rules. They form an important part of e-discovery, and will probably make their presence known at one point or another.

Another aspect of e-discovery is preserving the stored data from destruction while a case is being prepared. There is a mechanism called a Litigation Hold, which is designed to stop companies destroying incriminating data before it’s brought to court.

When a company is informed of an impending civil litigation, a Litigation Hold may be requested to enforce the preservation of all email archives to ensure the data is available for evidence. All data overwrites, destruction or other removal has to be stopped until the case is finished.

E-discovery and email archiving is a huge, contentious subject. It takes a trained lawyer to know the vagaries of such things, so it’s essential to seek professional legal advice if you receive an e-discovery request and you aren’t sure what to do.

The main changes to the lawisthe requirement of hedge fund, private equity and venture capital managers to have to register with the SEC as investment advisors. Up until then, they were excluded from the main SEC regulations regarding compliance.

The idea behind the changes to hedge fund compliance was to further the original goals of the legislation. To improve regulation and supervision of financial institutions and to establish adequate supervision of the financial markets. Both of these goals were designed with a view to protecting investors and customers from abuse.

The side-effect of these measures was to promote better international cooperation and seek to improve international regulation of financial markets. The reputation of Wall Street and our large financial institutions hasn’t been great for the past few years. That makes it necessary to bolster that with robust regulations to show the world we are getting our house in order.

There have been too many high profile financial failures over the past years. Add the fact that our banks caused the global recession, and we have a lot of work on our hands to rebuild confidence in the way we do business. This new Act is a small step on a long road, but a step in the right direction.

The changes mean that investment advisers need to produce financial reports on their funds. That includes information on how its managed and a risk assessment. This is to protect investors and improve transparency throughout the sector.

Specific requirements for archiving are listed below. These are all things needed to ensure hedge fund compliance but are already in the public domain. It’s just previously hedge fund managers didn’t have to comply.

• All incoming and outgoing information must be stored in its original form
• It has to be easily retrievable and searchable
• It has to be time-stamped
• All data has to be stored in the main office for the first two years
• Data has to be retained for five years but can be archived after two
• Data has to be put into tamper proof media
• Data has to be stored in a secondary, separate backup location
• Be able to access and provide archived data promptly
• Be able to provide data in its original format

Many financial institutions will have these measures in place already as they comprise existing law. However, those who specialize in hedge funds, or are regarded as separate entities will need to ensure they comply with these requirements.

Those listed above are just the highlights of the new law. For a complete copy of the requirements it’s important to contact an attorney or the SEC direct. As with other financial institutions failure to comply with hedge fund compliance rules is viewed very dimly indeed.

The most relevant rules fall under the Administrative section of the Privacy rule of HIPAA. They stipulate that adequate safeguards are in place to protect email and any other media electronic or otherwise that contains Personal Health Information (PHI). Any record that includes details about your health or medical information is regarded as PHI and falls under the HIPAA email compliance rules. The Privacy rule is a stipulation of what we would all hope was what most organizations would consider good email etiquette anyway. Practices like making emails secure, checking the address before sending to prevent information being sent to the wrong people, and checking attachments and records to ensure the right information gets to the right people.

HIPAA Email Compliance is one of the many parts of the legislation that is enthusiastically enforced. It’s something that both the government and the consumer both agree on, and should take steps to ensure is complied with. We all know that information is a commodity, and is a valuable resource that many entities would pay good money to access. Ensuring your own medical information is secure is as important as the government ensuring compliance of HIPAA.

The cost of becoming compliant was significant for many organizations when the law was first passed in 1996. Fortunately, the measures needed to become compliant benefit the business as a whole, so while it was a significant effort to comply with the HIPAA Email Compliance rules, it wasn’t wasted money.

To become compliant, companies have to secure their IT systems, especially email servers and storage. They also had to increase building security, employee security and ensure their email system was safe and secure. These are steps that many companies were taking anyway to secure proprietary data. Others weren’t so careful and had to spend thousands of dollars securing systems, upgrading security and taking other measures to safeguard information. The added benefit of this was that every company involved lessened the risk of their own data being accessed as well as that of their clients or employees.

Of course now, HIPAA email compliance is only one of the myriad of legislation that business has to contend with in order to be completely legal in the American marketplace. Since Enron, there has been a raft of new accountability legislation from several entities that stipulates that email has to be stored securely, used securely and be available for inspection at any time. The modern marketplace is a complicated one and the average company needs expert legal assistance to even start trading.

The impending launch of Microsoft Exchange 2010 got quite a few SaaS vendors worried when they first heard about it. The new built-in archiving features of the platform were one of the main reasons they were in business.

I don’t think it is the end of SaaS email archiving services, not by a long shot. Firstly the email archiving is basic, and requires the clients to use Outlook 2010, which isn’t out yet except in beta as part of the Office 2010 suite.

Secondly using Exchange 2010 involves a significant investment in hardware, software and support. Something which many organizations just can’t afford right now. Considering many vendors offer the equivalent benefits already for a much lower cost, take up of Exchange and Outlook 2010 is expected to be limited for a year or so. Or at least until the economies of the world pick up.

The Exchange archival model also depends on the storage capabilities of the company. Unless many companies drastically improve their storage solutions, mailboxes will be limited, or restricted and the archive facility will lay idle. While hard drives are relatively inexpensive, they are still an added expense.

Many organization don’t allow full-text indexing on their Exchange servers. We all know this puts quite an overhead on the Exchange server, and will only work efficiently on low scale or low use platforms. Larger scale organizations simply can’t afford the slowdown in performance full indexing involves. The multi-mailbox search in Exchange 2010 depends on full-text indexing to work, therefore is largely useless.

Email archiving is based on three requirements. Storage, discovery and compliance. Exchange 2010 only addresses two of these concerns and those only on a basic level. The storage needs a hardware solution to make it work. Exchange has done much to improve how it handles storage by allowing multiple copies of databases, mailboxes and data. E-discovery is only addressed on a basic level, and as we see indexing involves compromises. Also emails can only be copied to another mailbox, not extracted from the system and provided immediately.

Compliance isn’t even touched by the new platform, so many organizations, especially those regulated by the SEC will still need a third party solution.

Exchange a made great strides in increasing management, usability, scalability and seems to be trying to drive down the cost of ownership. There are compromises though, the initial installation will cost a lot, both in time, resources and money. A new infrastructure will most likely be needed, involving the hardware, software and network. Then training for the support staff, as the new platform has many new features, and ways of doing things.

So SaaS email archiving vendors don’t have too much to worry about just yet. It’s going to be a year or three before Exchange 2010 is rolled out across the globe.

Microsoft in their software has laid a great emphasis on the practical life of the people. They have tried to provide the people what they wanted. This Microsoft exchange is also a good example of that. You all can use it in your house, offices or in other platforms. Basically Microsoft exchange 2010 is a communication tool, but you all can do it in style using it. Communication is not limited to the mail receiving and sending but you all can start live voice conversation with your client when ever you wanted. The reliability of Microsoft exchange 2010 is also quite awesome. You all just cannot find a better alternative of this software. There is nothing which you will complaint of. Every thing has been laid down in the desired format and style, so you will surely appreciate it. More over, the complex task which you find in the previous version of exchange has been paid proper attention and to some extent they have been simplified as well. This software will make you more independent in your approach. You do not need to depend upon the Microsoft exchange support in order to rectify various tasks. Now you will decide when to take help and when to not. Microsoft exchange 2010 is immense software with innumerable thing for you to explore. This is just the beginning of it.

Aside from the economic crisis, financial institutions are experiencing a slump.  Changes in legislation, increased competition, increased costs and decreased efficiency are just some of the reasons.  These institutions are often so convoluted in their processes that it is almost impossible to have a complete view of their client portfolio and make decisions or sales based on that information.

Lately some of the more forward looking institutions have discovered financial CRM products.  CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and is a system that spans an entire infrastructure, designed to put information into the hands of those who need it.

Financial CRM’s enable the banks to get to know their customers again.  It also enables them to analyze them and target them with products and services that might want or need depending on criteria.  It opens up a whole new vista of opportunity for increased sales, customer retention and therefore profit.

The main obstacle to these financial institutions is that before CRM, they stored customer information in disparate and often incompatible systems that couldn’t talk to each other, so information was fragmented.  Not having the whole picture of a client prevented the business from maximizing profit and understanding their customer more.

It isn’t all about selling more stuff to customers though.  A financial CRM allows an institution to study their clients, to get to know them more and to pre-empt issues.  Two sayings are pertinent here, prevention is better than the sure, and it’s easier to keep a customer that get one.

If a customer is seen to be habitually missing payments or going into debt, then a bank can interject and offer solutions to the customer pro-actively.  By offering the solution to a problem, the bank is taking the initiative back while appearing to be caring to the customer.  The customer feels the service is good, that they are being looked after which increases loyalty.

That is just one example of how a financial CRM can help the profitability of an institution.  Another is the speeding up of decision making within the company itself.

For those who still don’t know the difference, a backup is when a copy is taken of a given media and stored elsewhere.  This is to provide disaster recovery should any disaster befall the building, the company or its infrastructure.  Every business should have a comprehensive backup process that is followed to the letter, but it is different to archiving.

An archive is designed to copy, store and manage data for the longer term.  It is designed to be a permanently separate, accessible silo where the data can be safely kept.  Ideally it would be sited somewhere other than the premises, in a purpose built facility where it is protected from all forms of harm such as flood and fire.

In the case of an email archive, for compliance, the email data is siphoned off the corporate email platform and formatted into a particular state.  It is then indexed, compressed and then stored safely somewhere else.  That storage should be secure, safe and resilient, so the client can access their data should the need arise.

A backup can run in conjunction with an archive, but are completely separate entities.  They should not be confused.  The only driver for a backup procedure is disaster recovery and damage limitation.  Archiving is necessary to satisfy a range of legal obligations that are enforced aggressively, as well as the retention of important information.

It isn’t only for E-discovery that archiving is a good idea.  Business depends a lot of email using it as the main means of communication both internal and external.  Often corporate communications, policy changes and even external contracts are communicated this way, and they are important for any business to retain for a period of time.

On paper it is an easy mistake to make.  Both processes make copies of stuff for retrieval later but only one will protect an organization from litigation if an E-discovery request comes their way.

While emails can be retrieved from a backup, it is a time-consuming and laborious task.  With no real indexing facility, finding emails may take a significant amount of time, especially in larger, communication heavy organizations.

An email archive makes it easier to follow email trails and the branches that can occur when mail is copied and forwarded to multiple recipients.  A thorough implementation should also comply with the relevant legislation and prevent any action being taken against the company for non-compliance.

Let’s set the record straight once and for all.  A backup policy is good methodology, but entirely optional.  Email archiving is not.  It is mandatory and specified in more than a few laws.  Ever since those very high profile corporate scandal cases, every business has had to comply with a set of stringent compliance laws that demands an effective trail be left with any documentation of any kind.

Posted on 29 October 2009

Legalities aside, email archiving should be used by businesses large and small, no matter what their line of business. It was once thought to be the preserve of public companies until the changes in legislation made sure every company in the country had to comply.

Email archiving is also useful for internal purposes such as employee monitoring. While not very popular with staff, emails can be stored, retrieved and used for disciplinary or investigative purposes as well as compliance with internal guidelines. This kind of monitoring can not only warn the company about breaches in security, potential risks and insider dealing.

With an effective email archiving solution, alerts can be set up for keywords or key phrases in an email that can flag up potential risks as they happen. If this traffic is monitored regularly then action can be taken at the earliest signs, and potentially prevent it getting out of hand. The keywords can be anything pertinent to the business from resume, career, swear words, to client file, secrets, medication and anything company specific.

While this activity may not seem ethically sound, it is another tool in the ongoing mission to protect companies from damage from without, and within. Employees are often unaware of the problems they cause by sharing information they shouldn’t or gossiping about subjects that are better off left alone. If an effective email monitoring and archive system is in place then these kinds of incidents can be stopped in their tracks by early intervention or discipline.

Most smaller to medium companies don’t have a legal department so the burden falls to IT. In an in-house email archiving setup they will be the ones who control and maintain the system anyway so it’s logical for them to monitor. However, in an outsourced situation that burden can be passed to the vendor to take care of.

There is inevitably an expense to setting up an archiving solution, but in this country it is one that businesses cannot avoid. Since those high profile corporate fraud cases, it has been legally mandated that every company large or small who communicates via email has to have some kind of storage and archive facility for them.

If an E-discovery request is presented to a company without a coherent archive strategy, they may have trouble finding the data requested, or even worse, may not be able to find it at all. This not only causes problems for the litigation for which the data is bound, but also for the company itself. The government and judiciary don’t look kindly on those who don’t comply with these new laws as it hampers them when they are trying to investigate companies.

The whole idea of the new legislation was to improve public confidence in American business by ensuring there was always a paper trail for everything they did. Anything that gets in the way of that is viewed dimly indeed.

Company email has become a vital source of evidence in legal proceedings over recent years. As it became more important to the way businesses operated and communicated, both internally and externally, the more useful email became in litigation.

Email compliance soon became an important part of an IT department’s life, and plans were hurriedly drawn up so organizations could meet their obligations. While archiving email has been a part of the IT schedule for many companies, it was often on an unofficial or ad-hoc basis. Then along came a raft of legislation compelling businesses to create and maintain an effective, and compliant archive and retrieval system.

Fortunately, even during its infancy, there were two methods of email compliance. The first was to control everything in-house, on the organizations own servers. Then build in a secure storage function, efficient retrieval and processes to answer E-discovery requests.

The second was to outsource the operation to third party providers and let them take the strain. They would take the email information off Exchange servers or other email platforms, format it, compress it and then store it securely. They would then service any E-discovery requests made by the client or their legal team.

Both have pros and cons.

Keeping it in-house involved a hefty investment in time and money. Extra hardware, networking, staff and processes would be needed in order to build a coherent, and compliant process that would satisfy the needs of the legislation. The benefit was that the organization retained full control of the data, the systems and the process.

Having the email compliance hosted offloaded just about all of the initial outlay, the need for the hardware, extra staff and the infrastructure to support a compliant system. That would be in the hands of the vendor. The size of the solution could also be scaled according to seats. If the client company grew, bought other entities or got purchased itself, the outsourced service could be scaled to meet the new needs.

The downside was that it is a recurring expense that the business has to pay, but doesn’t own. The organization also has to rely on the professionalism of the vendor in order to ensure the data is safe and that they are completely covered in the event of litigation or E-discovery requests.

There is no right answer to the question of what method is right for which business. That comes down to the individuals involved. Both solutions lend themselves to different scenarios, and different situations. The decision whether to go in-house or outsource depends entirely on where the organization is now, and where they plan to be in a few years time.