Does Your Organization use E-Mail Archiving Tools?

Slow or unresponsive email can affect business communication significantly. Companies tend to keep every email they receive for documentation and legal purposes for years. A solution to this is email archiving. It’s important to archive older email to allow for faster performance and reliability.
Microsoft Outlook has an archiving feature built-in, and after the PST file reaches a certain size, it prompts users to automatically archive email. This can be useful, but stores both the PST file and the archived email on the local computer, which can present problems if that data is lost.
Microsoft does offer an e-mail archiving service called Exchange Hosted Archive that can be installed and enabled for a low monthly cost, which is hosted by Microsoft, thus reducing stress on an Exchange server, and provides a feature for employees to search and access old email on their own. This means that staff can easily retrieve old email without needing to bother their tech support department.
Alternatively, companies can that use Microsoft Exchange have the option to use locally based third party email archiving add-on programs, and have benefit of being able to synchronize email across devices, and to provide a means of backup to either a local server, or an off-site company that provides managed Exchange solutions.
If you prefer locally-stored server archives, several third party companies offer archive add-ons for Microsoft Exchange servers, including GFI MailArchive, which provides an easy to access server folder accessible to staff in Microsoft Outlook that is searchable. It also contains industry standard compliance features that businesses are required to abide by.
Many companies that offer Microsoft Exchange services also offer secure email archiving abilities that meet industry standards, including AppRiver and A Better Outlook.
To paraphrase both websites, some of these features include meeting compliance and audit rules such as Sarbanes-Oxley, FRCP, and HIPAA, write-verification to ensure message integrity and authenticity, online search, retrieval, monitoring and audit tools, dual encryption, and more.
Those managing a company’s I.T. infrastructure should do their research when it comes to email archiving to ensure privacy and security laws and regulations are met before purchasing or using any solution.