E-mail retention: Covering the corporate backside

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: MIKE KARP ON STORAGE IN THE ENTERPRISE
08/09/05
Today's focus: E-mail retention: Covering the corporate
backside

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* Business regulations and e-mail archiving
* Links related to Storage in the Enterprise
* Featured reader resource
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Quest Software
Best Practices Storage Management Tech Brief

This brief provides an overview of how to implement best
practices for managing storage in your Microsoft Exchange
environment. It will assist messaging managers, administrators
and directors struggling with the complexities associated with
managing e-mail storage growth, policy enforcement, archiving
and other related issues. Learn how to implement critical steps
for managing storage. Get your technical brief today.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=110030
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_______________________________________________________________

Today's focus: E-mail retention: Covering the corporate
backside

By Mike Karp

This week, we continue our discussion of e-mail archiving, which
as you will see has little to do with helping you retain your
old e-mails and everything to do with covering the corporate
backside.

Once, e-mail archiving was just a way to get older messages off
production systems by transferring a large bulk of old data onto
cheaper tape media. Times have changed. Today we live in a
litigious age, where lawsuits are commonplace. Also, the
increased emphasis on the part of both lawmakers and
shareholders to make sure that corporate officers act both
ethically and responsibility is having an effect. The individual
business ethics of some corporate leaders not withstanding,
properly managed archiving processes are clearly a useful tool
in helping to maintain shareholder value in a publicly held
company.

Every corporate officer in the northern hemisphere should love a
good archiving system. After all, in many cases today's CEOs and
other corporate honchos have lost the protection that working
for an incorporated body once afforded. Now that they can be
hauled off to the court room to face both the legal music and
public humiliation, we should understand that the two-fold
reason for archiving corporate e-mail these days is first to
provide litigation support, and second to ensure that companies
can prove regulatory compliance.

Support for litigation falls within two broad categories. The
first - retention and disposition - refers to an e-mail system's
ability to retain e-mail for as long as regulatory issues
demand, and to dispose of unneeded messages in an efficient
manner.

Retention is relatively straightforward: it is a system's
ability to keep data available for as long as is necessary.
Think of this as a two-part process: first, the system
identifies the time a message was created; it them applies
policies set by the administrator, (these will of course be
dictated by whatever set of rules or regulations are embedded in
the service-level agreement governing e-mail management, which
of course will be driven by applicable rules or regulations).

Just how long messages need to be retained - and which messages
must be kept - clearly will differ from industry to industry. By
way of example however, companies affected by the Sarbanes-Oxley
Act - generally, these are public companies and certified public
accountants (CPA) - must save all business records, for "not
less than five years." Public companies and CPAs must maintain
audit-related documents for seven years.

Disposition in this case refers to disposing of messages that no
longer need to be kept in the system. Such messages fall into
two categories, those that have been retained for the period
prescribed by law, and those messages that should never be saved
in the first place. What is this last group? It is that
eminently purgeable aggregation of spam, viruses and other
potentially dangerous content that never should have appeared in
our messaging environments in the first place.

Next time, we will look at the other categories of protection in
case of litigation: search, discovery and forensics.

The top 5: Today's most-read stories

1. Questions dog Cisco routers
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage4712>

2. First family of Windows Vista viruses unleashed
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstoragealert4657>

3. Anti-spyware firm warns of massive ID theft ring
<http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/080505-id-theft.html?t5>

4. Crashing the 'Net
<http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2005/080805buzz.html?t5>

5. Cisco vulnerability posted to Internet
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage4422nlstoragealert4661>
_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Mike Karp

Mike Karp is senior analyst with Enterprise Management
Associates, focusing on storage, storage management and the
methodology that brings these issues into the marketplace. He
has spent more than 20 years in storage, systems management and
telecommunications. Mike can be reached via e-mail
<mailto:mkarp@enterprisemanagement.com>.
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Quest Software
Best Practices Storage Management Tech Brief

This brief provides an overview of how to implement best
practices for managing storage in your Microsoft Exchange
environment. It will assist messaging managers, administrators
and directors struggling with the complexities associated with
managing e-mail storage growth, policy enforcement, archiving
and other related issues. Learn how to implement critical steps
for managing storage. Get your technical brief today.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=110029
_______________________________________________________________
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Archive of the Storage newsletter:
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Breaking storage news and analysis:
http://www.networkworld.com/topics/storage.html
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