Email is a huge repository of information and the millions of emails sent and received daily – often of a confidential nature – contain a wealth of knowledge that needs to be safeguarded.
The information in emails is of such value that in December 2006, the Supreme Court in the United States made changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; which rules dictate what happens in federal civil cases and how discovery of information and materials relevant to civil cases is conducted. These amendments are significant because for the first time, all electronically stored information – including email – is subject to legal discovery.
What does this mean? It means that federal agencies, courts and attorneys may request electronically stored information that is of relevance to court litigation cases or forensic investigations. Failure on the part of any organization – businesses, city governments, schools or colleges – to provide the information, in whole or in part, could result in court sanctions, fines and loss of credibility.
Why archive email?
Following the changes to the FRCP in 2006, schools have been required to think about how and where they store digital information in advance of potential legal skirmishes. As with the majority of organizations, schools are more and more dependent on communication technologies for their day to day activities and email is used to communicate with students, between members of staff, to notify members of the various school boards and to distribute minutes of meetings, and so on.
Therefore, should any school or education institution find itself in the midst of court litigation instituted by itself or by others, that institution needs to be prepared to collect and present within a short time-frame the information requested by the court or the other party’s attorney. One of the arguments against email archiving is that many schools already have best practice backup plans in place. They argue that since they have backups, finding old email is not a problem. Although backups are extremely important – especially if you are an administrator who suddenly had to rebuild a server after hardware failure – they are not sufficient. Often email conversations going back months if not years are needed and although backups can be used, it can takes days. With email archiving, full threads can be retrieved within minutes.
There are other benefits:
Access to old / deleted emails
Employees do not have access to backups but with an email archiving solution, they can search for old or deleted emails using a web browser or directly from the Outlook client.
Storage problems
As employees send and receive more emails with larger attachments, they are frequently requesting more storage space on the server. If they use PST files stored on their local machine, administrators have another problem to deal with. Low storage levels, suffering email servers, problematic PST files, frustrated employees and an impatient boss waiting for his inbox to be restored after hitting the delete button by mistake are signs that email archiving is a must for the organization.
Ability to manage / check employees email
With an email archiving solution, management can monitor, if necessary, all email communication generated by employees in the college or school if they suspect any wrongdoing, as well as retrieve emails for internal investigations or disputes.
An informal survey by eSchool News last year found that 80% of school administrators were unclear about their district’s policies for the retention of electronically stored information, including email. Although many were aware of the amendments to Federal law, 90% said they had yet to initiative activities to comply with the regulations. Is your school or college in the same situation?
Maybe it’s time to consider email archiving. Download GFI MailArchiver today and see how why email archiving will benefit your school or college.
 
GFI MailArchiver for Exchange: Overview | Features | Pricing | Order Now |
Essentials
