Regardless of intent, sending emails in a company is much more than simple and efficient communication; it is a direct reflection of your brand and belief system, is a document that may hold trade secrets, is a legal document and much more. This is all the more reason for maintaining an archive of all email correspondence.
An archive of correspondence offers the ability to be able to defend against any potential claim arising from an email sent from your company. An email doesn’t necessarily have to be company business; a personal email sent through your servers may hold you or your company liable for its contents.
Why is Archiving Worth the Trouble?
As an administrator of a company large or small, it is your responsibility for the maintenance of documentation, and emails are the simplest form of written communications. They are easy to prepare, take no technical acumen and can easily be sent without any difficulty. Therein lies the rub. Without controls, emails may be an extremely caustic situation to guard against, and without policy and retrieval systems, business is at the mercy of the sender and recipient should less than flattering communications are contained in them. Simply relying on a computer back up system is insufficient as the retrieval of a particular piece of electronic mail may be next to impossible to recover. Financial data may be lost, placed in competitors hands or worse yet, be used as a tool against your company.
You need to not only protect your internal and external communications, you also are required to protect the authenticity of your correspondence. Emails are a corporate necessity and without an integrated and automated system, the preservation of your records sent electronically could be your company’s downfall. An email continuity system assures recovery of documents transmitted in this fashion, and provides a “safe haven” for information stored on hard disks. Should your computer hard drives crash, data will still be available for retrieval
As messages are held and stored in real time, there are monitoring capabilities for assuring inappropriate emails or sensitive information is transmitted, a system also monitors employee productivity, minimizes personal email transmissions, and reduces duplicate emails automatically.
Compliance officers have an easier time of security assurance, as they have the ability to review email transmissions in real time. Your peace of mind can be assured with the ability to retrieve documentation immediately should the need arise because of an audit or suspicion of wrongdoing.
Green Benefits
The reduction of paper copies for document storage provides a significant reduction in De-forestation, as the cost of doing business isn’t reliant upon purchasing reams and reams of paper for this purpose. Today’s Eco-friendly aspects of technology are becoming more and more critical as companies explore their carbon footprint. Major corporations across the globe are constantly searching for ways to not only reduce costs, but doing it in such a way as minimizing the negative impact of doing business at the mercy of the environment.
Conclusion
Email communications are documents that should be monitored, maintained and stored for legal purposes. In today’s litigious society, business needs every weapon of defense at their disposal. An archival system for email storage makes good business sense.
Do you archive your emails?
