Not all email storage and retrieval software is the same. That may be a pretty obvious comment to make, but when it comes to issues such as compliance, security, email management, and the cost of storage space, it is a very important statement to bear in mind.
Every organization should implement an email archiving solution that copies emails in real time and stores them in a secure environment, so that their integrity can be guaranteed if the data is ever required for eDiscovery under the Federal Rules of Civil Disclosure.
The issue of compliance extends further for organizations operating in regulated industries, who may not only be required to store emails for an extended period of time, but who might also need to retrieve accurate and immutable email correspondence as part of a disaster recovery plan.
The compliance issue alone should make organizations wary of implementing any email storage and retrieval software without first investigating whether or not it is fit for purpose. Further potential issues may also influence an organization´s choice of email storage and retrieval solutions.
Email Management and the Cost of Storage
The way in which email storage and retrieval software copies and archives email data should also be an important consideration. Whereas some email archiving solutions deduplicate email data before indexing and storing it, others simply copy every email that passes through a mail server.
This not only leads to storage space being exhausted much quicker, but also prolongs the length of time it takes to conduct searches of the archive. Once searches are concluded, the duplicated items – having not been removed – are included in the results, making the results harder to navigate. Some email archiving solutions also limit the amount of search results that are displayed. for example, Office 365, buy default, limits searches to 250 results, which is insufficient for eDiscovery. There are workarounds, but they are far from ideal and are time consuming (exporting to a PST file and searching outside of Office 365)
Returning to the storage space issue, once the available space has been exhausted, organizations have to create more space on existing servers – limiting the processing space available – add additional storage devices or migrate data offsite, dividing the email database and making it harder to manage.
There are naturally costs involved in increasing storage space, and these will increase over time. It has been calculated that the volume of business email will increase by 5% per year – meaning that an organization receiving 2,000 emails each day now will find more than 3,250 emails in their inboxes in ten years´ time. Therefore, it may be important to consider email storage and retrieval solutions that can cope with the inevitable growth of email data.
Compatibility, Flexibility, Oversight and Scalability Issues
Other considerations organizations should be conscious of include the fact that not all email storage and retrieval solutions are compatible with every type of server or email service. Some may require plug-ins before they can function, while others simply do not work on any operating system other than the one they were specifically designed for.
Any lack of flexibility can make it difficult to set appropriate retention policies. Whereas some industries require that emails relating to certain transactions are retained for a fixed period of time, this does not mean that all emails have to be retained for this period. Without the flexibility to set bespoke parameters, organizations may encounter more unnecessary storage issues.
Email storage and retrieval solutions needs to have a system of governance so that administrators can assign delegated access to the archive for some members of staff, but not others. The system of governance should also provide an oversight of archive access via audit logs and audit trails – ideally in simple-to-follow report formats.
One final consideration is scalability. Your organization may not have a large number of email users at present, but what about in the years to come? Growth in this area is typically hard to predict, so organizations should ask software providers about the options to scale up or down as necessary to ensure their email storage and retrieval software does not become redundant in a short space of time. Some email archiving service providers will carry on charging for licenses for users even if they leave the company as their mailboxes will need to be maintained.
Email Storage and Retrieval Software from ArcTitan
ArcTitan is SpamTitan´s email storage and retrieval software. A cloud-based “set and forget” solution, ArcTitan uses real-time copying and secure archiving to ensure the integrity of email data. All encrypted data transfers are conducted over mandatory TLS protocols, and email data stored in an IL5 certified data center – IL5 being equivalent to critical military national security level. Email data is stored onto Replicated Persistent Storage and is automatically backed up to ensure that come what may, data can be recovered.
ArcTitan does not set limits on the storage space available (eliminating cost issues), but reduces how much storage space is used by deduplicating each email before compressing and indexing it. This means there is no fragmentation of an organization´s email database, searches can be conducted more efficiently, and email management does not become an issue. With ArcTitan, you only pay for active users. When employees leave the company, you no longer pay for the license, even though the mailbox is retained in the archive.
Our email storage and retrieval solutions are managed via a web-based portal and are therefore compatible with every operating system, mail server and email service – with no plug-ins necessary. Delegated access and tamper-evident audit trails provide administrators with the oversight they need to ensure compliance, while ArcTitan has no minimum number of users and scales up to 60,000 users.
ArcTitan has been designed for ease-of-use and maximum flexibility. Granular controls allow administrators to set bespoke retention policies and safeguards are in place to prevent the accidental or malicious deletion or alteration of an email before its retention period is expired. Deployment of our email storage and retrieval software, and the import of any existing email archive, is quick and easy
ArcTitan is a compliant and effective email archiving solution for organizations of all sizes and, in order that organizations can evaluate the merits of our email storage and retrieval software in their own environments, we are offering a free, no obligation demo of ArcTitan. Contact us today to find out more about our free demo offer, or to ask our experienced team of Sales Technicians any questions you may have about email storage and retrieval solutions.
Key Features of ArcTitan
- Scalable, email archiving that grows with your business
- Lightning fast searches – Search 30 million emails a second
- Rapid archiving at up to 200 emails a second
- Email archiving with no impact on network performance
- Ensure an exact, tamperproof copy of all emails is retained
- Easy data retrieval for eDiscovery
- Protection for email from cyberattacks
- Eliminate PSTs and other security risks
- Facilitates policy-based access rights and role-based access
- Only pay for active users
- Slashes the time and cost of eDiscovery other formal searches
- Migration tools to ensure the integrity of data during transfer
- Seamless integration with Outlook
- Supports, single sign-on
- Save and combine searches
- Perform multiple searches simultaneously
- Limits IT Department involvement in finding lost email
- Compliant with regulations such as HIPAA, SOX, GDPR, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, etc.
