E-mail Discovery

Compliance in the Digital Age

It moves in and out of your offices like a breeze, carrying vital information about your business and your clients to hundreds - even thousands - of users per day. It hasn't just become a dominant force in communications, but also a dominant presence in business and customer transactions.

It's e-mail, and as the medium's usage becomes more widespread in the world of business, so grow the legal questions, data storage issues, and ramifications that surround it.

It's the Law

E-mail has quickly become a huge component of daily business life. Experts now say that 60 percent of critical information is stored within corporate messaging systems, a number that has nearly doubled since 1999. With this kind of e-mail volume carrying vital information, companies must dedicate more time and resources towards the storage of electronic messaging.

Proper storage of electronic files is not just important. In many cases, it is also legally required. One current example in the financial industry is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)'s Rule 17a-4 that states that every national securities exchange member, broker and dealer is required to keep accessible records made between certain specified parties.

Even though the financial industry has recently been spotlighted, all businesses should be aware that certain e-mails are considered official correspondence and should be stored.

Of course, not all e-mail needs to be retained. Only those electronic documents considered to be official records should be archived. Examples of official records include:

• A contract negotiation containing finalized agreed upon pricing
• Correspondence pertaining to a patient's medical file
• A memo sent to employees informing them of a new policy or process

If this information is improperly stored or becomes unavailable, a business may face not only dire legal consequences, but also negative market implications in the form of lowered stock prices, the loss of corporate credibility, and diminished consumer confidence.

Practical E-mail Policies

Meeting compliance laws can seem impractical and difficult, especially when considering the vast amount of e-mail any business may receive on a day-to-day basis. How do you decide what to delete and what to keep?

The logistics of e-mail management can be staggering. The average Information Technology (IT) administrator spends 5 to 6 hours a week retrieving old messages, while the same employee may similarly spend 8 hours a week backing up an e-mail system. When retrieving messages, an IT administrator can spend hours, even days, hunting for an e-mail that is over a year old.

There are many ways to help alleviate these stresses and make your e-mail system a more practical and compliant tool:

• Put a retention policy in place or apply your current policy to e-mail. Decide what e-mail communication, under the legal guidelines that govern your business, must be saved. Establish a set of storage rules that fit the laws you must uphold. If you are not sure which e-mails to keep, seek the advice of a third-party expert in the field.
• Use a digital archiving system. This is especially important if your company deals with a high volume of e-mail. The length of retention in accordance with federal and state compliance laws can run the spectrum of a few years to the life of the record. The volume of data may be too much of a stress on your e-mail system's memory.
• Utilize an outsourced archiving service. One way to streamline implementation times and to help control costs is to utilize an outsourced digital archiving service rather than purchasing and administering an onsite software application. Many organizations currently outsource the management of hardcopy records to reap the benefits of improved service and leveraged economies of scale. An additional way to capitalize on this outsourcing is to include digital archiving.

Conclusion

As e-mail becomes more widely used for all sorts of business communications and transactions, the importance for storing this vital information grows. As some legal cases have already proven, proper storage of e-mail and electronic communication has become vastly important. To help meet the compliance rules of your company, you must first define your areas of compliance and then strive to meet them through proper e-mail archiving and information storage.