Email Record Retention Management
One of the biggest debates in organizations is related to email record retention. Some legal departments recommend deleting all email after 30 days while others believe keeping all email records for 7 years is best. Still another group believes that letting the user decide what to keep and for how long is better.
- Delete after 30 days
- Users oppose this - they believe 30 days is too short so they will create PSTs for their messages, forward emails to their personal Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo email account.
- Loss of business transactions - 90 days later how can you find the approval or change order that was sent in an email?
- Loss of evidence - in eDiscovery if your records are non-existent, then the opposing party's legal evidence is taken as fact.
- Keep for 7 Years or whatever the legal limitations are
- Users are happy - they can access everything.
- Business transactions are secured - you can you find the approval or change order that was sent in an email.
- Strong evidence - you have all the messages - unless the user deleted it.
- Manual Retention
- Users are not happy - too much housekeeping.
- Business transactions may be secured - what if the user didn't select it for saving?
- Evidence - you may have the messages - unless the user deleted it.
- Retention - each user makes the determination of how long a message is saved - and two users may make conflicting decisions on the same email defeating your policy.
The MailMeter Solution:
MailMeter captures all messages into a single archive that is easily searchable and can ensure that records are deleted after their retention period expires. Any of the three alternatives discussed above is easily handled by MailMeter.
MailMeter Benefits
- Control Retention Periods securely
- Full compliance with all regulations
- Dramatically reduce costs of legal investigations
- Protect intellectual property
- Reduce organization and executive exposure
