| » | Overview |
| » | Regulatory Compliance |
| » | Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance |
| » | Litigation Support |
| » | Mailbox Management |
| » | Email Pre-Compliance |
| » | Knowledge Management |
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Overview There are four primary drivers and two secondary drivers that lead companies to acquire an email archiving solution. The primary reasons include regulatory compliance, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, litigation support (e-discovery), and mailbox management. The secondary reasons include email pre-compliance support and knowledge management. The best email archiving products on the market ensure that each of these requirements is fully supported in an easy-to-use form.
Regulatory Compliance Regulatory compliance is a primary driver for companies that are registered broker/dealers with the SEC. The NYSE and NASD regulatory bodies have similar/parallel regulations for the retention, retrieval and supervision of electronic communications by their members. The primary purpose of obtaining an email archiving solution by these entities is to ensure regulatory compliance improving the firm’s relationship with its regulators and reducing the likelihood of fines or other penalties. E-Trail Digital Archive satisfies all regulatory requirements and goes above and beyond the existing regulations to guarantee your solution will continue to adapt to the growing body of regulations. Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance is a primary driver for any company that is publicly traded or which may become publicly traded in the future. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires that all public companies retain all documentation (including electronic communications) that relates to values appearing on financial statements. While at first glance a company may view this as straight-forward, arguing that retention of email sent/received by financial statement personnel is adequate. However, it quickly becomes apparent that the problem is more complex. Consider that an employee emailing their travel voucher (a company expense) or a sales person emailing the value of a just completed sale (a company revenue) would fall under the umbrella of financial reporting email, and the breadth of the problem becomes apparent. E-Trail Digital Archive allows clients to capture, retain and quickly retrieve financial emails in seconds; satisfying their Sarbanes-Oxley compliance requirements with minimal effort. Litigation Support Litigation support, also known as e-discovery, is of paramount importance for all companies that may become a party in a civil litigation. With more than 90% of companies with over 100 employees becoming involved in at least one litigation in any three year period, most companies can expect to encounter an e-discovery exercise. Firms that lack an email archive quickly find themselves searching backup tapes and archive files for responsive email. The costs of this search mount up quickly and often lead parties to settle cases on unfavorable terms just to escape the expenses associated with e-discovery. E-Trail Digital Archive allows clients to quickly and easily retrieve responsive emails in seconds. With the most sophisticated set of search criteria available in the market today, E-Trail Digital Archive allows users to zoom in on the exact set of email required for a request. This minimizes legal fees by substantially reducing the superfluous messages that other systems routinely collect for review. Mailbox Management Unlike the first three email archiving facets, mailbox management is not driven by compliance or legal issues. Mailbox management is the use of an email archive to reduce the operational expenses associated with operating an email plant. Users are keeping an increasingly large set of email in their primary mailbox and its associated folders. This causes frequent upgrades to the email plant in the form of larger quantities of expensive, high availability storage, additional email servers, and email server licenses. E-Trail Digital Archive can eliminate these expensive upgrades through the use of its seamless integration with Outlook and Exchange (or any IMAP server). E-Trail DA Exchange Gateway allows clients to place restrictive quotas on email age or mailbox size on the email server plant. However, rather than deleting these emails, E-Trail Digital Archive simply removes all but the header information. This saves the storage but provides the user with exactly the same look and feel within the Outlook mail client. Users get the benefits of an infinite mailbox, while email server plant operational costs plummet. Email Pre-Compliance Email pre-compliance consists of an automated preview of all emails with the capability to embargo, or to direct a copy of, an email for a compliance review. Pre-compliance rules may look for inappropriate language, regulatory red flags (e.g. “guaranteed”, “great returns”) and/or Chinese wall violations (e.g. emails between investment bankers and research analysts). E-Trail Digital Archive provides clients with the ability to define server-based rules that fulfill all pre-compliance requirements. Knowledge Management As more companies create and maintain email archives within their organizations, they will quickly realize the vast amount of valuable knowledge captured within that sea of unstructured data. The challenge is to effectively mine the valuable information encapsulated within the archive. E-Trail Digital Archive comes complete with integrated data mining and reporting modules to allow clients to find and use the knowledge for strategic advantage. Most products on the market will require clients to purchase a third party data mining package and undergo a complex integration project to achieve the same results that E-Trail Digital Archive provides “out of the box”. | ||||||||||||