GFI Software recently commissioned a survey on business email archiving. The survey was conducted by Opinion Matters and involved 202 decision makers at U.S.-based small-to-medium-sized enterprises. The results were surprising. Opinion Matters discovered that 62.4% of those polled did not utilize an email archiving system in their office (in fact 38% of respondents claimed they neither had an email archiving system nor a backup system of any kind).
The repercussions associated with a lack of an enterprise email archiving system are many and extreme. A great deal of organizations – especially those with limited resources - use business email as a file server substitute, meaning their business-critical information is stored within email messages. 37% of the decision makers polled admitted to this fact, claiming that they had to wade through older and deleted emails at least on a monthly basis if not more frequently to locate the information they need. What would happen then to an organization utilizing this method of storage if it could no longer access older or deleted messages? Being unable to retrieve valuable business data could result in lost business or a tarnished reputation.
Not only could important business information be lost in the case of a network failure, but a lack of an email archiving system also means an increase in day-to-day productivity roadblocks including limited email backup and restore capabilities (which could also result in data loss), a strain on Exchange servers (resulting in system slowdowns), storage problems and a loss of valuable work time sifting through older emails (email archiving systems are equipped with automated search capabilities).
More importantly, email archiving is now a business necessity due to a new obligation to comply to both U.S. regulatory standards regarding email retention and the 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) - amendments that added emails, instant messages, text messages and other electronic documentations to the list of business records that may be used as legal evidence. And so with the advent of eDiscovery (utilizing electronic documents for legal evidence), businesses are now mandated to retain all electronic information, making it available in the case of an audit or lawsuit.
Without an email archiving system, a business runs the risk of not being able to locate the necessary information in the case of an audit or lawsuit which could result in compliance violations, legal suits and monetary penalties. 66.8% of those polled by Opinion Matters were not even familiar with their need to comply with the new email retention standards and FRCP amendments. This percentage skyrocketed to 90% within the subpopulation of enterprises with only one IT professional on staff.
All businesses are advised to take the time to educate themselves on all U.S. regulatory compliance standards and FRCP amendments that would concern them. Businesses should also take the time to research email archiving options before implementing the appropriate system into their office infrastructure. With the latter, there are two options: on-premise and hosted. The benefit of an on-premise solution is equipment ownership and total control whereas a hosted solution is the more economical choice for the short-term.
Nowadays, hosted email solutions are quite popular with growing businesses; in fact, 31% of those polled in the Opinion Matters survey said they would consider a hosted email archiving solution. For more information on hosted email archiving solutions please check out our article entitled Growing businesses benefit from Spam Soap in this month’s newsletter.
Want to learn more?
Contact Bryley Systems today for a free business-technology consultation on the benefits of email archiving for any enterprise regardless of size or industry. Call 978.562.6077 or email Sales@Bryley.com for more information.
References
“SMBs get failing grade in email archiving awareness,” written by Mark Cox for eChannelLine on March 22, 2011
“10 Steps to Establishing an Effective Email Retention Policy,” written by Eric Lundgren, Vice President of Technical Sales for the Information Governance Business Unit at CA Technologies, in January 2009
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