Cloud-based email archiving has a wide array of benefits that you may not be aware of. Despite this being the case, many businesses don’t currently use an archiving system to manage their emails. A large number rely on email backups, even though backups are impractical and data loss is always a real concern with this method. In this article, we will be looking at the benefits of secure, cloud-based email archiving over backups
Email Loss isn’t Possible
One of the most important benefits of a cloud-based email archiving solution could easily be explained by Hilary Clinton. In the case of an email archive being stored locally, should the device on which that archive is stored be lost or stolen, the entire archive would never be seen again. That is precisely what happened last year during her election campaign.
Not only was that archive lost, it could potentially have been accessed by an unauthorized individual. Keen not to make a similar mistake, Donald Trump has reportedly started using a messaging app that deletes all emails once they have been read. While this would certainly prevent accidental disclosure, it would not be an option for many businesses. Regulations require businesses to keep emails for a number of years.
Loss of email is not something that is seen as an option in regulated industries. The reason for this is that huge fines await companies who do not archive or backup their emails. Emails must be stored securely and made available to auditors. If organizations fail to do this, they will be in violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, FINRA, HIPAA and the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act. If a backup or local email archive is misplaced, the fines can be severe.
In the case of healthcare organizations, if a laptop computer is stolen and email backups containing electronic protected health information were on the device, an unauthorized individual could potentially access the data. That would result in a violation of HIPAA Rules. The Office for Civil Rights could fine a healthcare organization millions of dollars for a data breach such as this with ease. If emails are archived and stored in the cloud, a breach such as this would not be possible even if the device was stolen.
Legal Discovery and GDPR Require Fast Email Retrieval
In the case of a lawsuit being filed against a company, it may have to provide copies of emails as part of legal discovery. Although many companies store old emails in backups, searching for emails can be a difficult, time-consuming task. For an average-sized organization searching for emails using this method it could take weeks, even though it is required for emails to be found in minutes. If this company were to be using an email archiving solution, archived messages can be searched and retrieved in a matter of seconds or minutes, not weeks.
This is a similar situation for data access requests under the EU´s General Data Protection Regulation. EU citizens now have the right to request details of any data that could be used to identify them, modify it where necessary, and erase it is there is justifiable cause. Compliance with GDPR for businesses maintaining a database of EU citizens could be simplified significantly by implementing cloud-based email archiving. Cloud-based email archiving, of course, has the benefit of complying with the regulations relating to data security.
Storage Difficulties Resolved with Secure, Cloud-Based Email Archiving
When you consider the number of emails now being sent and received in today’s business environment, and the requirement for those emails to be kept for years in many cases, the space required for storing email is huge. In fact, the average employee sends or receives 121 emails a day, according to a study recently conducted by Radicati Group. To put that into perspective, for an organization with 500 employees that is 60,500 emails a day. With 22 working days each month, that amounts to 15,972,000 emails a year. While each individual email may only take up a small amount of storage (a few KB), over a year the storage space required is significant. Cloud-based email archiving allows millions of emails to be stored without requiring organizations to purchase any hardware for storage.
ArcTitan – The Solution
In conclusion, cloud-based email archiving has a large number of benefits. In order to get the most out of all the benefits cloud-based email archiving as to offer, businesses should look for a provider that can help implement the new system in a way that is easy to use and is cost effective. To meet all these needs, TitanHQ developed ArcTitan – a secure, cloud-based email archiving solution that allows organizations to meet compliance requirements, search email archives quickly, and retrieve messages in minutes. Furthermore, ArcTitan has excellent scalability and can be used for email storage by companies with ten to 10,000+ email accounts.
Emails can be archived from anywhere at any time, and messages can be accessed via a browser or mail client. With a pay as you go subscription, cloud-based email archiving is easily affordable for businesses, whatever the size!
Contact the TitanHQ sales team today to find out more about the benefits of ArcTitan.