August 2008 Archives

To help eliminate these problems, many organizations turn to email archiving. But not all archiving solutions are created equal. For instance, stubbing is often a key component of the email archiving solution. With stubbing, a pointer is kept in the email server, such as Microsoft Exchange, while the original message and/or attachments is moved off to an archive area. When a user wants to look at an email, the stub is accessed, and then message is retrieved from archive with the expected benefit of a reduced mailbox size. Unfortunately eliminating the problem of mailbox size often opens the door to stubbing issues. Over time, stubs can actually cause performance problems as the number of items kept (messages, including stubs) increases. As a result, stubbing becomes a band-aid that does nothing to mitigate the growing email problem. (read more)

Email in the workforce has become more than a tool to distribute thoughts, ideas, and corporate plans; it has become a social medium for silently communicating with the world beyond corporate walls - real and virtual. More importantly, it is now a common method to steal, distribute and leak corporate information and secrets. It is far too easy for an employee to access secure corporate information, cut-and-paste the information into an email, and then send the email to an external email account. Even non-fraudulent activities, with best intentions, such as mailing a spreadsheet to a home email address to work from home can open a Pandora's box for leaking sensitive information. (read more)

Overall, SMB's have a potential shortcut to 'Litigation Readiness' through SaaS outsourcing of the primary messaging and file storage systems. Legal definitely needs to be involved in the provider selection and RFP process, but IT should welcome another sponsor to the project. Legal should request documentation on system capabilities (search/culling for Rule 26 disclosures and Meet & Confer), Chain of Custody, exception reporting, deposition fees for authenticating evidence (Rule 30(b)(6)), SLA's for retrieval rates, physical/electronic security and the actual storage format of the ESI. The last is particularly important in case the requesting party makes arguments for using alternative search engines on the ESI. Governmental agencies are required to store records in an open format like MSG files for email, so any SaaS provider who has public sector clients should utilize an open format storage system. With a little research and diligence, SMB's can leverage SaaS to achieve litigation readiness in a cost effective manner. (read more)