One of the most important methods of communication today is email. Although we constantly deal with several emails on a daily basis, the email content is generally not kept anywhere else. It just stays in your mailbox. Apart from that, organizations across the globe are dealing with a rising number of compliance requirements. Because of that, executives of small and medium sized firms are asking themselves how they could address these concerns through email archiving and what should be archived. So, what is email archiving? What are the benefits it has to offer?
What are the problems with email management?
Back in 2017, a whopping 269 billion emails have been sent and received on a daily basis across the globe. That figure is expected to increase especially since email is now the preferred method of communication instead of the traditional mail or fax. The smooth and efficient process used for email data exchange is now indispensable for many organization. Countless information are sent through email across the world daily including contracts, invoices, as well as other business related information. All email users are responsible for the data that the email contains and the processing of the information.
Email archiving can help in processing and filing emails in a more systematic way. Email archiving mainly serves the purposes of preventing data loss as well as for documentation. Emails could be kept for a long time when email archiving is used. Since emails are stored securely, the company’s email security is improved. The contents are kept unchanged and can be retrieved right away even if it’s been stored for a long time. Any effective cybersecurity strategy should include email archiving.
The Evolution of Email Archiving
In the past, the volume of emails sent and received were low. But the number grew significantly over the years. Before, email archiving focused more on trusting the users. Organizations relied on their staff to manage their own email archives in their chosen email clients.
As time when by, IT departments began to realize the importance of backups and slowly backed up their emails. However, looking for emails were not that common, not for the end users at the very least. Back then, it took weeks to find and restore a particular email. The IT staff had to restore whole backup to locate a single email, which was a tiring process. Fortunately, this is no longer the case these days. End users now can easily search for and restore a particular email.
What are the different types of email archiving?
Are you thinking of archiving your email? If yes, then you should first learn about the most suitable method. Given that, your company’s IT team must concentrate on the in-house email infrastructure, which involves choosing between client side or server-side archiving.
What is server-side email archiving?
It is an automated and centralized archiving that functions even without the intervention of an end-user. Server-side email archiving is a popular option and among the widely known ones are Gmail, IMAP, Office 365, and Exchange.
What is client-side email archiving?
The end user needs to set up the client-side email archiving Wilmington NC. The user is responsible for archiving emails. It is commonly used in connection that involves a POP3 mailbox. It is the most suitable strategy for an organization that wants total control over all important email communication, lessen the work for the IT team, and follow industry regulations and standards.
Email archiving into the cloud or on-premises
Once you’ve settled on the best type of email archiving, the next thing to do is choose between a cloud solution or an on-premises email archiving. For the latter, you have to buy a software that will run independently when put to use. This is a great option if the organization has its own IT team with on-premises mail services or if the organization is using a cloud email service.
The provider will be responsible for the operation and maintenance if cloud services is used. All the information is stored in the system of the provider. In case you opt for cloud only email archiving, you need to choose the maximum level of email security and availability. Additionally, you need to keep the email archive available physically on your servers.
Because of the large volume of emails sent and received on a daily basis, it’s almost impossible to categorize which of the emails need to be or not to be archived. Because of that, all received and sent emails are commonly archived right away. This is also helpful in terms of protecting you against possible tampering and to make sure that the integrity of the archive is maintained. But data protection regulations must be considered.
Benefits of Email Archiving
- Regulatory compliance – emails can be stored in a tamper proof, accessible, and authentic manner for several years thanks to email archiving. It helps you remain compliant especially if you are running a business in a heavily regulated sector like government, legal, financial, or healthcare.
- Data loss protection – data that’s critical to the organization is lost once users delete crucial emails accidentally, intentionally, or even when employees resign from the company and their mailbox is wiped out. Email archiving keeps all emails, including its content and attachments, unchanged, available, and readily accessible in the archive.
- Elimination of mailbox quotas – gets rid of the problem involving mailbox quotas and the unpleasant problems that come with them.
- Independence – if a mail server has a problem or if data has been lost, users can still get access to their emails through the email archive. Firms stay independent from their email service provider or the mail server in this way, which will make it easier to carry out their business activities without any interruption.
- Increased productivity and efficiency – the volume of information on the mail server will always remain low thanks to email archiving, which also means faster backup and recovery times. This leads to better performance as well as leaner backups. With the right email archiving solution, users can quickly search through all the email content and attachments that have been archived, which improves their productivity.
- Longterm solution for pst files – full mailboxes and corrupted pst files are among the most dreaded problems at work. When this happens, an IT employee can just assist in restoring the files when the pst files were backed up. Consequently, such file formats add strain on your IT team due to their susceptibility to mistakes. With the assistance of email archiving, pst files could be archived centrally within the organization without having to go through the trouble of altering access permissions.
Email Archiving Vs. Email Backup
The terms email archiving and email backup are often used synonymously. Because of that, it’s assumed in many instances that backing up alone is enough. But, backing up your email server won’t replace a suitable email archive in any way. A backup could only backup information over a short period of time and then restore it if required. But compliance requirements are not taken into account, or the constant restorability or availability of crucial emails are not ensured. With backups, emails could be deleted right away once received and therefore, disregard security. Also, a backup won’t be able to help you with compliance requirements and can’t help prevent data loss. It’s crucial to backup emails but it can never replace the functions offered by email archiving. Plus, email archiving is an integral part of an efficient backup plan.
Small and medium-sized businesses can benefit from all advantage of modern and secure email archiving with SpartanTec Inc. Call today and discover how much time we can save your employees.
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