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Criteria for Effective
Email Data Management Solutions
Government and industry organizations
have worked for several years to develop record-management
guidelines for electronic documents, communications,
and emails. While these various guidelines apply to
a diverse range of organizations, any effective solution
for managing email must include these capabilities:
- Archiving of email documents and attachments along
with associated address and routing information in
their original electronic form.
- Creation of an email policy that addresses message
retention and filing requirements.
- Automatic, content-based classification of email
to folders/categories within the system.
- Creation and execution of disposition instructions
for each email folder/category.
- A feature that prevents administrators from tampering
with audit records.
- Powerful search and retrieval tools for end users
and administrators, based on a full-text index and
userdefined metadata.
- Use of random-access, low-cost and non-volatile
media for long-term storage.
Ideally, an email archiving solution
should address both the basic requirements stemming
from relevant, published guidelines and add value by
bringing the power of data management to email systems
- in essence, channelling the daily stream of email
message and attachments into a tool that provides a
competitive advantage.
Any such solution should address the requirements of
users, IT administrators, management, and record-keeping
professionals by providing the following benefits:
- Reduced IT costs through more efficient email server
management. A product featuring automated capture,
integrated support for low-cost mass storage, and
content-based classification rules can transform an
organization's temporary cache of messages on the
server into a tool for enterprise document management.
Mail servers are freed of message overload, improving
performance and availability. Additionally, without
the requirement to restrict message size, larger and
more complex documents can be transmitted. As a result,
email can serve as the basis for strategic planning
and business development efforts without impacting
IT.
- Increased productivity through faster, easier access
to stored messages. Full-text indexing combined with
a powerful search engine would allow end users to
access their own messages, while authorized managers
or administrators could search across multiple mailboxes
to meet audit and regulatory requirements, discovery
requests, and other business needs.
- Record management. An effective solution ensures
adherence to formal email policies with enterprise
level data management tools that categorize and manage
email through a useful life cycle. By using a tool
that integrates record management functionality into
email systems, organizations can easily comply with
SEC and government requirements.
- Virus recovery and data protection. An effective
solution ensures that email records are tamper-proof
throughout their life cycle and guards against abuse
by monitoring compliance with corporate policy. Such
a solution should also facilitate cleanup of message
stores following a virus attack, enabling recovery
within hours rather than days and guarding against
information loss.
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Archiving
Criteria
