The Law Requires Email Archiving
According to industry experts, approximately 90% of the day's business communications are performed via email or by way of unsecured instant messages. Communications including unstructured data can clog up an organizations network bandwidth and take up great amounts of storage space. The volume of emails and similar data forms in most businesses double every 12 to 18 months.
It begs the questions: What do I do with all of that data? For most organizations, the data has been backed-up to tapes or in the worst case scenario deleted from centralized repositories within email and database servers. After the amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedures were passed in December of 2006, all emails, communications, files, directives and requests that may be relevant to a current or future litigation cannot simply be deleted or overwritten. The data must be produced and thus it must be archived, because that's the law.
Remarkably, most business operators don't realize they must comply with the Federal Regulations on Civil Procedures, or FRCP. In this instance, ignorance is far from bliss. It could put you and your organization in serious legal trouble, if the requested electronically stored information (ESI) is not produced when requested by courts. In fairness, those that are aware of the need to archive fail to make the investment to put a proper archival process in place because of the perception that it's too complicated or too costly or too much trouble. The reality is if you can be sued in federal court, and that includes just about every individual and organization, you must archive and then be able to quickly and completely retrieve requested email communications. Another reality is your existing data storage systems, NAS and SAN solutions are not intended as a solution for archival, litigation holds, and eDiscovery
Here's another tough question:
If your organization is sued, are you prepared to provide records of all communications and transactions conducted by certain individuals with the company during certain dates relating to a certain set of issues?
Remember, it's the law that any of your electronic records can be requested and must be provided by a court order under the newly updated Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
What are the FRCP standards?
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure govern the production of evidence in Federal cases. The FRCP is designed for the civil federal court system, with input from the US Supreme Court, and approval by the US Congress. Seventeen states have adopted the new rules for electronic stored information (ESI) discovery and eighteen additional states are considering adopting the new rules for state civil litigation.
Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world
On Twitter now
email archiving
Powered by Twitter
Esther Schindler
If the comments are ugly, the code is ugly
claird
SVG a graphics format for 21st century
pasmith
Take Chrome OS for a test spin
Sandra Henry-Stocker
Solaris Tip: Have Your Files Changed Since Installation?
jfruh
Android fragments vs. the iPhone monolith
mikelgan
What Gizmodo missed about the Pro WX Wireless USB disk drive
Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325
Join the conversation here
Quick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.
Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.
Sloppy thinking at it's best!
This article is full of misrepresentation and innuendo calculated to push a sales agenda. Any general counsel would throw this author out of his/her office."The data must be produced and thus it must be archived, because that's the law." Try reading all of the Federal Rules. What about safe harbour. What about a 30 day deletion policy. If I get rid of it, I don't have to do squat. What tripe!
Anonymous is Correct
The article vastly overstates the legal requirements. Archiving is NOT required by the federal rules. Yes, there are definitely circumstances under which preservation of relevant email is required because of pending litigation. Yes, archiving may be a prudent policy to comply with all kinds of record retention requirements and business practices. No, archiving is not the law.Nice flames, unfortunately they are a bit misinformed.
The attention grabbing headline can be debated, the article however is correct."Remember, it's the law that any of your electronic records can be requested and must be provided by a court order under the newly updated Federal Rules of Civil Procedure."
Rule 26, 33 and 34.
Archiving is NOT manadatory by law, but you WILL face additional cost and a real possibility of sanctions and even loosing your case (as numerous case law will attest to), if you can not produce relevant ESI when requested by the opposing side and even more so when mandated by court.
30 day retention is fine, if you can institute it for your ENTIRE network.
Most IT departments can NOT guarantee that the data which may be relevant to a case is completely gone from their network once it is deleted from the mail server.
Rule 37 (Safe Harbor), states that you have to prove in court that the data requested is innaccesible and too cost prohibitive.
Of the hundreds of IT Directors, CIO's, and Network Administrators, not a single one was willing to testify in court that they know for a fact that everything that was relevant to a case was completely deleted from the entire network after 30 days.
By law, (Rule 26 again) a company does have to disclose where the relevant data may and does reside.
Unfortunately once an email is delivered or sent, it can reside in multiple locations such as, PST files, Various network drives, Desktops, Non email servers, Back Up tapes, USB's, Etc.
That is why archiving email, the most prevelant form of ESI in a centralized archival solution, is practiced by most of Fortune 500, Federal and State government agencies.