Rather than a luxury or simply an added advantage, email archiving has become an indispensable part of business today. More and more companies are forced to archive their emails in order to meet the demands of regulatory compliance, while a growing number of businesses are starting to realize how email archiving can help boost their team’s productivity.
What is it that makes archiving necessary under these circumstances? Why is it not enough to simply back up data, as most companies already do?
While a backup is mostly meant to restore files after disk failure or server issues, archiving stores documents together with their metadata and usually involves a much more complex indexing system, allowing for advanced search.
Check out this infographic which highlights the differences between an email archive and a backup and demonstrates why backing up is not enough for complete regulatory compliance:
THERE IS A NEED TO RETAIN EMAILS
Most regulations now governing the protection and preservation of data in industries across the spectrum require the retention of emails and other communications in a read-only format, including their metadata (date of creation, last modification, etc.), for a certain amount of time. Additionally, companies are not only required to store their emails, but also to be able to produce them when needed in legal inquiries and similar situations.
WHY BACKING UP IS NOT ENOUGH
Backup is:
- Unorganized
- Practically Unsearchable
- Alterable
- Not Compliant
- No Server Relief
Archive is:
- Indexed
- Fully Searchable
- Inalterable
- Fully Compliant
- Relieves Email Server
While a backup does store your emails, it does so in an unorganized way and without indexing, which makes your backed up data practically unsearchable. Plus, backed up emails are non-compliant with regulatory requirements as they remain alterable after being stored.
WHY ARCHIVING IS NECESSARY
An email archive, on the other hand, automatically obtains messages, attachments, and information about the messages from email servers, and then indexes and stores the given information in a read-only, tamper-proof format for a specified period of time, depending on the particular retention policy.
Archived emails and messages, unlike backed up ones, can be searched thoroughly and located quickly and easily. Email archiving allows eDiscovery to take place extremely efficiently, saving companies both time and money.
Finally, having an archiving system means having an automated process, rather than leaving this task to your (already burdened) IT department, thus freeing up IT time and minimizing the risk of human error.
USING BOTH ARCHIVING AND BACKUP IS A WIN-WIN COMBINATION
While backing up is not enough, using it in combination with email archiving is essential for data security. If your network fails and you need to restore your database, you still require a complete backup of that database. However, with the added advantage of email archiving, if your database backup happens to be corrupt, you will still be able to restore everything via the archive. A combination of on-premises email archiving and off-premises backup storage is a solid plan that will make your data both fully compliant and secure.
If you would like to find out how Jatheon can help you implement and manage an email archiving solution, contact us or request a demo.
