Every business, large or small, has intellectual property and other valuable data to safeguard. Although as an MSP you are no doubt aware, many of your clients may not realize their inbox contains much of their most important information. Most would agree that data needs to be backed up, but there is still a disconnect when it comes to the importance of email archiving.
Unlike the processes involved in backing up regular files, archiving is an automatic procedure, extracting both the message and attachments in one simple, indexed format.
A point to emphasize with your clients is that simply backing up their email will not ensure their business information remains secure.
Data Restoration
One of the top reasons for archiving email is the ability to restore clients’ data in the event of a natural disaster, fire, or technology failure. Although a BDR solution will have a similar result, what about the information generated or deleted between backups? Considering email is the most common form of business communication today, those potential gaps increase the risk of losing critical data and could lead to compliance violations for certain customers.
Archiving systems are more organized than BDR solutions and easily searchable. This retrieval process allows users to recover missing, deleted, and older emails with little effort. That should make your clients happier, save them significant time, and reduce the number of requests their employees send your way!
Data Preservation
Going hand in hand with retrieving data is its preservation. Many of us are guilty of using our mailboxes as filing cabinets. Unfortunately, that can take up valuable storage on servers and force employees to spend a lot of time trying to find old messages. Archiving improves your clients’ productivity and storage efficiency. Also, what would they do if the system used to store their daily data should fail? Utilizing email archiving will allow your clients to avoid those catastrophes.
Litigation / Legal Proceedings
There may be times when regulatory proceedings or litigation pose a significant threat to your customers’ businesses, especially if they are not properly preserving their electronic messages. Companies may be required to turn over emails as evidence in court cases or just need the information to support their own claims.
There are a few different ways the legal system leverages electronic messages. The first is during early case assessments in which organizational leaders recover their emails to defend themselves or when suing or prosecuting others. Do their attorneys believe they are at risk based on the information at hand?
The next way they use electronic messages is in a legal hold. If decision makers decide litigation is inevitable, it is essential that they retain all relevant content. Archiving solutions will be highly beneficial in these instances.
The last way is through eDiscovery, where attorneys collect relevant data as evidence, including emails, social media posts, electronic documents, and information on mobile devices. Archiving solutions can sort, store, and export data based on specific search criteria — an indispensable tool for these types of procedures.
Although MSPs may hope their clients never have legal issues, the consequences their business leader clients could face if they can’t produce this type of evidence are significant. Being caught without one of these solutions simply isn’t worth the risk.
Compliance
Another huge reason for implementing archiving systems for your customers is to help them meet certain compliance requirements. Every industry has standards and regulations, including PCI, SEC, GLBA, HIPAA, HITECH, SOX, and others. For example, the Securities Exchange Act requires financial institutions to maintain statements, transaction records, and other business-related communications in an easily accessible form for two years.
With the rise of the EU’s GDPR, many experts suggest the United States will follow through with similar regulations soon. Businesses can expect to see higher fines for non-compliance with other rules and standards as well.
Not sure what laws might apply to your customers? Keep in mind that records retention is a standard requirement for most state, federal, and industry regulations. With billions of emails sent every day, archiving is one system MSPs and their clients cannot overlook.
Secure Solutions
The quality of the applications businesses employ to archive their email is just as important as the processes. When your MSP firm partners with Mailprotector, know your clients’ information will be protected and easily accessible with SecureStore.
Understanding everything there is to know about email archiving and being able to offer a viable solution will give your company a leg-up on the competition. Trust us; your clients will thank you for utilizing that knowledge and expertise.
Learn more about our SecureStore email archiving solution.
Author: by Greg Aiken
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