Email Management

Email and instant messaging systems have become the de-facto communication mechanism in business today. Emails have become the accepted form of conducting negotiations and communicating contracts. Instant messaging is now frequently used as an ad-hoc communication forum to negotiate and close business transactions real-time. Any email or instant message that contains detail of a business transaction of any nature is judged as a record of business and is therefore subject to the relevant laws and must be stored for the requisite period of time. However upon expiry of this period, it is of equal importance under the Data Protection Act, that all details of the record of business should be deleted with a verifiable audit trail and proof of disposal. Any business failing to adhere to these strictures risks falling foul of the various regulatory acts, which have both financial implications and consequential loss of reputation.

Faced with this obligation to store emails as business records, users are developing ever increasingly large mailboxes, with IT Departments subsequently forced to introduce email quotas to avoid overly large messaging systems. When email quotas are enforced, companies risk losing control of their email and their records of business as employees store old messages wherever they can; be it on local hard disks or CDs stored in desk drawers. All messages should be stored in a central repository, preferably within a wider EDRMS framework, therefore removing the need for email quotas to be enforced and the ensuing productivity drain when users manage their stored emails. Not having a central repository will have a negative impact on server performance and, more importantly, lead to a lack of formal record keeping (and potential contravention of the DPA) coupled with the loss of what is rapidly becoming a valuable corporate knowledge base - information within the email store.

When electronic communications are stored in a central repository, the storage mechanism should provide the stored messages with sufficient evidential weight that they will be accepted in a Court of Law should it be required. Equally the stored messages should be easily searched and reported on thereby decreasing the costs of a legal discovery. Failure to do so exposes businesses to an unacceptably high level of risk to their finances, their corporate compliance and their reputation. However, whilst email and instant messaging have increased our commercial productivity, by their very nature they create issues due to theirs seemingly transitory nature. Users can be unaware of the legality and longevity of electronic communications. “Commercially-unwise” use of emails and instant messages too often prove to be costly mistakes. Businesses should take appropriate measures to provide real-time monitoring of emails and instant messages to prevent the mistakes occurring rather than relying on rectifying the issues post the event.

In today’s litigatious commercial world, it is becoming increasingly imperative that email content is monitored real-time and that any emails of a potentially compromising nature be controlled and intercepted before they are sent. Whilst archiving solutions retain all emails for later scrutiny, they offer no protection against inappropriate content being sent in the first place. It is therefore vital to ensure that inappropriate messages (SPAM and viruses for example) are not stored in the email archive.

Centrom messaging solutions and services provide cohesive integrated approach encompassing email and IM archiving and control, anti-SPAM and antivirus protection, and email and IM real-time content management.

With almost 100 years combined experience in enterprise messaging; both Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino, Centrom specialise in providing clients with solutions which enhance the integrity of their messaging systems. We believe that messaging integrity encompasses everything from the actual message content to the evidential weight and compliance of the messages when stored - emails and instant messages are legal records and, as such need to be treated in the context of a wider (Document and) Records Management system. Key to our approach is our belief in partnering with our clients to deliver solutions that add real value to the business. Each of our solutions is client-centric, as vendor independence is central to our philosophy. We firmly believe that our client’s business needs should dictate the IT solution, not the other way round.