Email retention software is used by businesses for long-term email storage to meet government and other regulatory requirements. Email retention software is used to store email data outside of the standard email environment for as long as email data needs to be retained, often for several years.
A copy of each email that is sent and received across the organization’s entire email environment can be automatically sent to the archive using email retention software. The software allows you to create an exact, read-only, tamperproof copy of every message and store it securely for when it is needed. In the event of a compliance audit, investigation, eDiscovery request, or legal dispute, all email data can be quickly and easily recovered.
Email Archiving and Email Backups
Email retention software sends emails, email attachments, contacts, tasks, calendars, and other email data to an archive, which is different from an email backup. Email backups are designed for disaster recovery and are best suited to restoring entire mailboxes if they are corrupted or rendered inaccessible due to a ransomware attack. Backups are not best suited to recovering emails that have been deleted from a mailbox. While this is possible, it can take an exceptionally long time to find the emails and recover them, as backups are not searchable. Finding emails in a backup for eDiscovery, for example, would require restoring an entire mailbox, then manually searching for the emails that need to be recovered as well as searching for email data in PST files on user devices. That process could take several weeks, and only 30 days are allowed for responding to eDiscovery requests.
An email archive is designed for fast retrieval of retained emails. Prior to emails being sent to the archive, they are deduplicated to remove duplicate content (stubs of duplicates are retained), and are indexed to allow the archive to be searched. Emails can be located and recovered from the archive on demand, with recovery taking seconds or minutes at most. Further, recovery of messages and attachments from an email archive does not need the involvement of the IT department. An authorized user can perform a search and recover their emails from the archive via their email client.
Email Retention Software Solutions
There are two types of email retention software for businesses, the first, which is not recommended, is client-side email archiving. This is where an individual user is responsible for archiving their emails. This type of email archiving is performed through the email client. The reason this is not the best option is something as important as email retention to meet compliance and legal requirements is best not left to employees. Emails that are deleted rather than archived can prove to be an extremely costly mistake.
Server-side email archiving is the preferred method of email archiving, as this takes place independently from end users. When emails are sent or received, a copy is automatically sent to the central server archive. With this option, businesses can set their email retention policies and automate the entire process. It is efficient and eliminates human error. Email clients can still be used with this option to allow end users to access the archive and recover emails, but they will not be permitted to delete emails from the archive or alter them in any way.
Email retention software gives businesses the option of archiving emails, but there is a further decision to make: Where to store the archived emails. The two options available are on-premises archiving, where the archive is stored on your own servers or to host the archive in the cloud. There are benefits to both, but it is now much more common for businesses to use cloud-based email archiving solutions provided as email archiving-as-a-service, especially for SMBs who typically lack the in-house IT staff to set up and manage an on-premises email archive.
Even large enterprises see the value of using a third-party SaaS solution for email archiving. There are no hardware requirements, next to no management overhead, maintenance and updates are handled by the service provider, and cloud-storage is often much cheaper that the storage and maintenance requirements of on-premises hardware. Further, security is just as strong and oftentimes greater with SaaS solutions.
ArcTitan Cloud: Email Archiving Made Simple
ArcTitan Cloud from TitanHQ is a 100% cloud-based email retention software solution for businesses that creates a tamper-proof copy of all sent and received emails in a cloud-based archive, with messages sent directly to the archive in real time. All emails are deduplicated to reduce storage space and make searching easier. When you perform a search, you will not be presented with multiple copies of the same email. ArcTitan has been developed to make searching for emails lightning-fast. With ArcTitan you can search emails at a rate of 30 million in less than a second, you can perform multiple searches at the same time, and you can search emails and attachments within the same search.
Sending emails to the archive doesn't negatively affect network performance, and will ease the strain on your email server. The solution supports policy-based access rights and role-based access, and integrates with LDAP and Active Directory to speed up the process of assigning access rights to email data. With ArcTitan, your email data will be 100% secure and always available. Email data is encrypted in transit, with passwords hashed, and the archive is encrypted and stored on automatically backed up Replicated Persistent Storage on AWS S3. In the event of an email outage, your archive will remain available.
ArcTitan Cloud is quick and easy to set up, usually taking 15 or minutes or less. Email retention policies can easily be applied, and administration is simple and can be managed from an email client such as Outlook or via a web-based interface that can be accessed through any browser. There are essentially no limits on storage space and the solution is scalable up to 60,000 users, with customers only paying for the number of active users.
To find out more about ArcTitan email retention software, for details of pricing, and to arrange a product demonstration, give the TitanHQ team a call today. if you currently use software for email retention, the TitanHQ team will be able to help you migrating your existing archive to ArcTitan.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How long should business emails be retained?
Email retention periods vary depending on the country or state where you are based, the industry you are in, and the type of data. Email retention periods generally range from 1 year to 7 years, although some types of data may need to be kept for longer or even indefinitely. It is important to seek legal advice on email retention periods. Click for further information on email retention periods.
Will an email archiving solution ensure compliance?
No – Not all email archiving solutions are compliant with federal and industry regulations. Generally speaking, you must ensure an email archive stores emails and attachments in a tamper-proof repository, that emails are protected by end-to-end encryption, and that the solution allows emails to be restored in their original form.
Onsite vs offsite email archiving – Which is best?
Cloud email archiving solutions are as secure as on-premises archives and many service providers will guarantee 99.999% uptime. Searching cloud archives can be considerably quicker, and you will not need in-house IT teams to manage the archive and the hardware on which it is stored. The setup cost is much lower in the cloud and there is a predictable monthly expenditure. When all factors are considered, cloud email archiving is often the best and most cost-effective choice.
How much does email archiving cost?
Cloud-based email archiving avoids the need to purchase expensive hardware. You just pay a low monthly payment based on the number of mailboxes. Unlike many other email archiving solutions, with ArcTitan you only pay for active mailboxes and the cost per mailbox, per month in 2021 starts at $2.92 (based on 100 users).
Is it easy to change an email archive provider?
Some email archive providers make it hard to switch provider due to the use of proprietary data formats. With ArcTitan you can easily import different email archive formats and assistance can be provided with migrations to make it stress free. If you ever want to change from ArcTitan, you can export data in all common formats.