Enterprise Benefits of a Message Archiver

Archiving email messages might seem unimportant if you already have a backup plan, but a message archiver performs several functions in addition to storing user inboxes. In an enterprise where legal departments, administrators, and executives might need copies of old messages, a message archiver ensures that the corporation is compliant with various regulatory standards and has the ability to pull up an audit trail for investigations. Any e-discovery procedures require more than simple backups, so businesses need optimized features that can’t be found with a simple backup system.

 

More Security for Sensitive Data

Backups contain a long trail of messages with sensitive data, intellectual property, and trade secrets. Security should always be a priority, but you need to allow authorized access to data when it must be retrieved. Simple backup storage blocks all access except to administrators, which forces legal staff and others with authorized access to ask administrators to retrieve data. This procedure adds unnecessary overhead to IT staff.

With a message archiver, administrators store data in a specific location (usually, in the cloud) and provide access to specific individuals within the organization. The message archiving software provides an interface for permission assignments, making it convenient for administrators and reducing a lot of the overhead from traditional backup methods. Because archives are centralized, it’s also easier for administrators to apply the right permissions and access security on data without managing disparate systems across different storage locations.

 

Keep the Organization Compliant

Every enterprise has at least one compliance regulatory body that must be followed to avoid hefty fines. Violations can result in seven-figure fines, especially when dealing with financial data or personally identifiable information (PII). Several message archivers have features necessary for searching and storing messages, but you need a service that follows compliance standards. Whether it’s HIPAA, PCI-DSS, GDPR, CCPA, or any other compliance requirement, the choice you make can have a large impact on business continuity and future litigation.

A good message archiver lists the compliance standards the tool follows to protect customers from non-compliance violations. Make sure you review their documents and features to ensure that the compliance standards specific to your industry are a component of the message archiver benefits.

 

Built with E-Discovery in Mind

A true message archiver is built for e-discovery. The e-discovery process is necessary in legal departments, investigations, law enforcement reports, and other issues where litigation is a possibility. In businesses where legal staff must search for sensitive files and data to support law-based defenses and litigation, a message archiver streamlines the process and uses optimized search functionality.
Simple backups do not have optimized searches, which can require hours to find specific data. Optimized searches are a benefit that distinguishes standard backups from a message archiver. Authorized staff members can open the application, perform searches, and take copies of documents necessary for their legal work. The streamlined service saves time for any investigation, which ultimately saves you money in staff overhead and productivity.

 

Cloud-Based Services for Remote Users

To stay compliant, organizations must follow strict rules for remote access to an internal network. The cloud offers several benefits for organizations with remote employees and contractors. Using a message archiver running in the cloud, the organization can offer employees a way to access features from anywhere in the world. The cloud provider lets administrators configure access controls and integrate their own identity management system with the cloud platform, making it convenient to assign permissions to various groups.

Because the message archiver system runs in the cloud, remote employees can perform e-discovery from anywhere in the world. Remote work is often an option for most organizations, and several remote contractors might need access to important files. These employees and contractors can access cloud services from their own homes and offices. Authorized staff can also access files from any device including their desktop workstations, tablets, or mobile smartphones.

 

Convenient Deployment for Administrators

Your administrators will appreciate the ease of deployment in a chosen solution. Administrators are responsible for provisioning resources, configuring the message archiver, and assigning permissions after deployment. The right message archiver makes every step in the deployment process convenient for administrators while maintaining the best security for your data.

Convenient deployments should allow administrators to migrate current solutions and install the message archiver to any cloud platform. Don’t forget that data migration is a large part of moving from on-premises deployments to the cloud, so the solution should make moving data to cloud resources convenient. Some administrators prefer a hybrid approach where some data is stored on-premises, and a good solution will be flexible to work with your own organizational requirements.

 

Features for Files and Message Archiving

In an enterprise environment, email messages include file attachments. A good email archiver will take a copy of messages with their associated file attachments and allow authorized personnel to use search functions for both entities. E-discovery often involves finding documents used to validate contracts and verify user identities. Authorized personnel should be able to search this data in addition to email messages.

Search features should allow authorized staff to search historical data that could span years. The amount of data will depend on your data retention policies, but a good message archiver can be configured to store years of data and provide the functionality to search and extract data within minutes.

Integration into Your Email Solution

Because a message archiver works directly with email inboxes and file attachments, it should integrate easily into your current email system. Administrators can configure the retention policy, location for storage, and the solution should not interfere with user productivity and day-to-day email activity. In other words, a message archiver should be invisible to the user.

In addition to keeping email archives and production inboxes streamlined, the archiving service should be easily manageable. Reducing administrative overhead is one benefit of using a cloud-based solution, so it should enhance current backup and archiving policies rather than inhibit them. Administrators should find the solution easy to manage so that they do not have overhead fixing bugs, troubleshooting issues, and calling provider support.

 

Costs Stay within IT Budgets

Although cost is usually not a priority, the right email archiver should still stay within your budget. Costs are usually a secondary concern, but it’s often a factor in budgeting for anyone in charge of determining future IT costs. Even if cost is more of a concern than anticipated, you should still get the features that you need to provide good legal investigations into audit trails to provide a good defense into any business practices.

Before choosing the right email archiving solution, read documentation to determine the per-seat costs and ensure that it fits your budget even as you scale up and add more users to the environment. A good solution is flexible enough to fit into your budget while still delivering the right features that enable staff to perform their job function.

 

Scalable to Your Business

Most organizations grow and thousands of messages must be archived every day in an enterprise. The message archiver you choose should be able to handle terabytes of data without much interference in search optimization. Make sure the cloud-based software will support not only the number of users you currently have in your environment but any growth potential from additional user accounts added to the system.

ArcTitan supports all these features and more. It’s a fully compliant, scalable, convenient, and flexible solution that supports Office 365 integration. Secure your archives while providing a solution accessible anywhere in the world with optimized searches for your authorized staff.