Email archiving: Types and benefits

Most companies rely on communication to transact information. Despite the many new and advanced forms of communication, email continues to be the most preferred mode for businesses. The presence of email in business communications has become undeniable due to its formal, secure, and unified nature. This is further cemented by the fact that an astounding 300 billion emails are sent and received every day. The sheer volume of this email data makes it difficult for organizations to find a simple and secure way to manage it without letting it get corrupted or lost.

The data transacted in emails is of utmost importance. Emails contain confidential data regarding contracts, intellectual property, legal clauses, upcoming projects, employee and client information. While it's important to make sure that this data doesn’t get into the wrong hands, it's equally vital to make sure a copy of these emails are archived securely and that they’re easily retrievable when required.

What is email archiving?

Email archiving is the process of preserving emails in an immutable and tamper-proof format, in a secure environment, to facilitate simple search and retrieval of the data when needed. These requests could be part of legal requests or compliance investigations. Archiving emails is most commonly done outside the email server so that a copy of the emails will be secure in a server other than the one where the emails currently reside.

Archiving has become one of the crucial factors in modern business communications for a variety of reasons. While organizations in regulated industries are mandated to archive their data for a certain number of years, it’s good practice for other reasons. It serves as a repository to look up emails that have been requested as part of legal subpoenas, or simply even to locate an email that an employee has deleted by mistake.

In this article, we'll take a look at the benefits of archiving emails and the types of archiving.

Types of email archiving

Email archiving is commonly classified into two types based on the location where the data is stored: on-premise archiving and cloud archiving. Both methods have their pros and cons, and organizations can choose the type of archiving they prefer by considering their unique set of requirements.

On-premise email archiving

On-premise email archiving solutions capture emails and store them in an indexed physical database. This database is a hardware server that’s in control of the organization. On-premise solutions require significant hardware infrastructure during setup and periodic maintenance by dedicated staff trained to service the hardware.

Cloud email archiving

Cloud  solutions capture emails and store them in a secure environment in the cloud. The cloud can be private to the organization or a public cloud that's maintained by the archiving service provider. Cloud archiving solutions usually don't charge for deployment, but pricing is done on a per-user basis based on the subscription chosen.

Benefits of email archiving

Many organizations think they don't need to archive their emails because it's not a mandatory requirement in certain regions or industries. However, archiving emails isn’t done only to ensure compliance with industry standards or regulations. There are many benefits of archiving emails beyond compliance. Let's take a look at some of the most common.

Regulatory compliance

An increasing number of compliance laws have been enforced over the past few years. These regulations are applicable both at the region-level and the industry-level. Some regulations are applicable to specific countries, such as the United States and EU countries. There are also industry-level laws that govern specific industries. 

Organizations in the healthcare, education, and finance sectors have specific regulations to follow. Most of these regulations mandate that emails be archived for a certain period in case the data needs to be retrieved under certain circumstances. An email archiving service will help you achieve the compliance that you’re expected to adhere to.

Data retention management

The archiving period mandated by regional or industrial regulations vary. For example, HIPAA and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) mandate seven years of email archiving, whereas the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) expects emails to be archived for a five-year period.

You can manage years’ worth of email data on your email provider, but the hassle that comes with it will leave you putting in more effort than needed. You'll have to monitor the retention policy and periods continuously depending on the regulations your company needs to adhere to and clear the data that's not required. With an email archiving service in place, you can simply define the retention periods, filters, and rules according to your needs, and everything is handled by the archiving service.

Secure email storage

With the increasing sensitivity of data shared via email, emails are constantly the target of attackers. Hackers are continuously looking for loopholes to exploit email systems and gain control of them to extract money or information. Email providers are tightening the security features they provide to ensure their users don't fall prey to these attacks.

It's always safer to maintain a secure archive of your data on a server independent from your email provider. Most email archiving solutions provide end-to-end encryption, encrypting the email data both at rest and in transit. In addition, role-based access controls ensure that only admins or users who need access to the email data can view it. Audit trails keep track of who views email data and when. This gives ironclad protection to archived emails.

Simple and efficient eDiscovery

eDiscovery in emails refers to the process of searching through email data to locate a particular email that's being requested. Every organization goes through legal hassles, and lawsuits form a common part of managing the company. When the court requests a particular email about an ongoing investigation, searching for this email in your email provider becomes a time-consuming process.

With the eDiscovery option in archiving solutions, the faster and granular search options help you locate the required email in less time. Finding and preserving these emails with a legal hold also ensures that there's no tampering or deleting identified email data.

Storage management

Every organization sends and receives millions of emails each year, and this number keeps growing as businesses rely on them more. Maintaining this data in your email environment only adds to the financial and network strain of your email hosting server.

But because you never know when or why these emails might be needed, you can't expect your employees to delete these emails to manage their mailbox storage. When you archive your emails in an external email archiving service, you can let go of worries about mailbox quota and have all important emails securely archived. This will save a lot of space on your email provider and organize your older emails in one place.

Reduced costs

When running a business, unexpected occurrences come in many forms. You might suddenly find yourself amid a legal or compliance investigation. If you can't find one of the emails that could save you from the investigation, your entire business could be in question.

There can also be instances of data loss or corruption, and losing valuable email data can disrupt your business and increase the penalties to be paid significantly. These costs can be avoided by archiving your emails, and you’ll save money if you're prepared for any situation that comes your way.

Legal request management

Legal requests for an organization can come in many forms. The organization could get pulled into an enquiry following a case filed by an unhappy customer. The organization could start a case against an employee who has gone rogue. Legal requests can also be put forth by the court following a compliance investigation.

To manage these requests, evidence might have to be produced in court either to clear the organization's name or furnish evidence against the employee being investigated. Sometimes, email evidence can also help prove that your organization is compliant with the regulations you’re expected to adhere to. The secure archiving, eDiscovery, and export options available in email archiving solutions can help manage all types of email requests from a legal standpoint.

Improved productivity

More often than not, when it comes to day-to-day work, your employees will only have to access emails that have been sent and received recently. Having just those emails in their mailboxes and archiving older emails can save time in multiple aspects.

First, your employees won’t have to rummage through thousands of emails to find that elusive one. Second, when your IT management team is looking for emails in your archiving portal, they can find the required email easily thanks to the advanced and fast eDiscovery search available in most email archiving solutions. Locating emails in the archiving portal is mostly automated, which improves the productivity of your IT management team and other employees.

Business continuity

Hindrances come for businesses in multiple forms. Whether it’s a new security threat, a maintenance issue with your email provider, or corrupt data, you need to be able to access your data. It’s vital to stay vigilant and prepare for anything that might come your organization's way. An email archiving solution offers continuity by letting you access all of the necessary emails—even when they're not accessible in your email provider. Most email archiving interfaces allow users to view their own archived emails and even restore them back into your email provider if needed.

Simpler disaster recovery

As important as it is to keep your business going when there's a disruption caused by either natural or man-made reasons, it's equally important that you're able to recover from the disruption without much hassle. Having all of your emails archived in a secure server makes this recovery process easier. Most email archiving solutions provide an option that helps with uninterrupted access and information retrieval. This way, your emails can also be recovered back into your email provider, and you don't have to worry about your organization losing important data.

Protection from user oversight

Threats to your email data often come from outside the organization. However, sometimes email data loss could also be a result of accidental or intentional deletion by your own employees.

Employees might mistake an important email for an unimportant one and end up deleting it without realizing the need for compliance with regulatory laws. Employees may also breach certain contracts or regulations that have been enforced by the organization and delete any available email evidence to cover up their act. This may include confidential information shared outside of the organization. An email archiving solution stores the emails in an immutable and tamper-proof space, serving as backup even when employees lose vital information.

Independence from an email provider

Relying on just your email provider to maintain your emails could leave you in a fix when your email environment isn’t available. This could be due to a maintenance issue or downtime due to other external factors. When this happens, your business needs to continue. When you choose an external service other than your email provider to archive your emails, you’ll be able to continue emailing without interruption. Archiving solutions not only reduce your dependency on your email environment but also provide an alternate environment when your email provider is unavailable.

Central repository

Most official communication happens over email. This creates millions of emails that enterprise organizations must deal with in the long run. Having a central repository of all these emails helps you get an overall picture of how email transactions are carried out within your company. The central email archive makes it easier to manage, search, and locate specific emails and understand your users' behaviors. Your emails will be better organized, and even though data is distributed across devices and servers, a consolidated archive is available in one place.

Protect intellectual property

Emails often contain sensitive information. It could be a contract that you've drawn up to protect your company's work, or details about a project that you're working on for a client. All of this intellectual property about your organization needs to be protected from prying eyes. Securely archiving this data in your email archiving solution and not just your mailbox keeps a copy of the email available whenever you need it. To tighten security for these emails, you could even remove the email from your mailbox and store it just on your archiving solution if the conversation related to the specific email is finished.

Better email server performance

All formal transactions, contracts, project details, and more get shared over emails. This leads to most organizations accumulating millions of emails over the years. With this amount of data, storage requirements keep expanding and, in turn, add to the load on the email server.

Your employees shouldn't have to make the difficult decision to let go of important emails. They can simply manage their storage better by archiving older emails and deleting them from their mailboxes. Not only does this help overcome storage expansion and avoid mailbox quotas, it also improves the performance of your email server. When you search for a particular email, results will return much faster when the number of emails that need to be searched through is significantly reduced.

With businesses completely reliant on digital media for their communication requirements, the importance of data shared digitally only keeps increasing. Organizations need to ensure the utmost security for this data. Email archiving is one of the first steps that can offer this level of security for your data, in addition to the many other benefits mentioned in this article.

eProtect is a cloud-based email archiving and security solution that provides email archiving for cloud and on-premise email providers. The solution offers secure email archiving, quick eDiscovery, and export of data to ensure organizations stay compliant and are ready for all legal enquiries. eProtect is the archiving solution powering Zoho Mail, a platform trusted by millions of users.