When choosing an archiving solution, businesses have various options. The right solution will depend on business needs. For instance, consider whether the organization will need to archive email messages from multiple platforms. Additionally, consider regulatory requirements, as well as how much granular control the organization will need.

Two popular email archiving solutions include the Microsoft 365 Business Standard email archive and eGovernance archive. Each solution offers significant benefits for small businesses. Organizations should carefully evaluate their needs and budgets as they select the archiving solution most suited to their purposes.

Microsoft 365 Business Standard Email Archiving

Microsoft 365 Business Standard offers email archiving as part of its cloud-based productivity suite. This option is scalable, easy to set up and use. And it offers important email security and compliance features. With Microsoft email archiving, business users can:

• Access archived email messages from Outlook on the web, Outlook desktop app or Outlook mobile app.
• Search archived email messages using keywords, filters, and advanced query syntax.
• Apply retention policies to archived email messages to automatically delete or preserve them based on predefined criteria.
• Place archived email messages on hold to prevent deletion or modification for legal or investigative purposes.
• Export their archived email messages to a PST file or an Azure storage location for backup or migration purposes.

However, Microsoft email archiving does have several limitations that small businesses need to consider. For example, it does not support third-party email platforms or applications, such as Gmail or Thunderbird. And it does not provide granular control over archiving policies, such as excluding certain folders or attachments from archiving.

Additionally, certain archiving features remain tied to Microsoft licensing levels. Consequently, organizations may not benefit from uniform coverage throughout the organization. Since companies often choose to adjust licensing based on job functions, this can leave part of the workforce without adequate archiving features.

eGovernance Email Archiving

Like the Microsoft solution, eGovernance email archiving offers immediate scalability and 24×7 access to archived email messages. Powerful search capabilities aid users and eDiscovery efforts, and organizations can apply retention policies and automated holds. Also, important security controls keep the archives secure and compliant.

In addition, the eGovernance solution provides critical features not available through Microsoft. For instance, eGovernance:

• Supports multiple email platforms and applications, from Microsoft 365 to Gmail, Thunderbird and more.
• Provides granular control over archiving policies, such as excluding certain folders or attachments from archiving. Organizations can also apply retention rules based on keywords or metadata.
• Offers advanced features such as deduplication, compression, analytics, auditing, and reporting.
• Provides uniform coverage regardless of Microsoft licensing level. This means that discovery services and policy-based retention remain consistent across all enterprise and business licensing levels.

eGovernance does require some technical expertise to implement. Businesses will achieve optimal results when partnering with eGovernance consultants. However, users will find the system easy to use. Even beginners can perform sophisticated searches of their archives without memorizing Boolean syntax and statements.

How to Archive Email Records for Small Business with Expert Help

As organizations decide how to archive email records for small business, they should look carefully at their email environment and business needs. They should also review retention needs and regulatory requirements.

Whether organizations choose Microsoft or eGovernance for email archiving, the archiving consultants at eMazzanti and Messaging Architects can help. As Microsoft partners, and with deep expertise in eGovernance, they will ensure that organizations optimize the archiving process to support business goals.

Download Article PDF

Download Microsoft 365 Licensing Roadmap

The post How to Archive Email Records for Small Business with Enterprise-Level Features appeared first on eGovernance.

Collect Massive Amounts of Data from Disparate Sources

Civil and criminal cases frequently hinge on digital evidence, and that can mean data requests involving millions of document files. With modern collaboration methods, those documents include everything from email and voicemail to word processing files, social media and more.

In addition to including many different types of files, eDiscovery must also address numerous data environments. For instance, employees may use both company-owned and personal devices, from laptops to phones and tablets. Additionally, the organization may store data both on-premises and in multiple cloud environments and numerous applications.

Legal teams must find efficient methods to locate, collect and process that data. This involves finding a balance between collecting all relevant information and yet avoiding a data dump.

With the right tools, legal teams can locate and assess the data in place before collecting anything. An early data assessment that involves an initial in-place review of data delivers several key benefits. Legal teams can identify and address potential roadblocks early on. They also avoid over-collection of data, saving significant time and money.

Prevent Digital Spoliation of Evidence

While gathering these massive amounts of data, legal teams must take care to prevent destruction of or tampering with relevant data. This includes altering or deleting documents in any way. Whether intentional or not, this destruction of evidence, or spoliation, can result in stiff penalties and cause enormous problems.

To avoid spoliation claims, the team must use defensible methods to collect and preserve data. A critical component of this involves legal holds. Once again, early data assessment plays a key role. When the legal team identifies potentially relevant information early on, they can immediately apply legal holds to protect that data.

Technology has simplified legal holds, allowing legal teams to automate the process of creating and sending legal hold requests and releases. Reliable legal hold technology also includes auditing capabilities that ensure defensibility.

eDiscovery Challenges to Ensure Data Security

When organizations collect huge amounts of data and send it outside the organization, they effectively lose control of that data. Consider the thumb drives and other copies of data held by opposing counsel and expert witnesses. Every copy of the data distributed represents a cyber security risk.

Organizations reduce that risk by mapping and indexing the data, making it possible to conduct a preliminary review in place. Done well, this will reduce the amount of data that needs to be collected.

Taking the process a step further, the organization can collaborate with outside counsel on keywords and other search criteria. They can then gather the data set into one place and grant outside counsel conditional access to run reviews and publish for litigation. Keeping sensitive data in house ensures that the organization retains control and can audit any access.

Address eDiscovery Challenges with Unique eDiscovery Solution

Locating, collecting, and preserving data in a defensible way can prove incredibly difficult and time consuming when organizations do not have control of their data. And because of the amount of data and the time involved, eDiscovery costs typically represent from 20 to 50 percent of the costs of litigation.

Proactive organizations meet eDiscovery challenges with a strong foundation of information governance, aided by the right technology. When companies know where data resides, who owns it and who can access it, eDiscovery becomes much less painful. Legal technology such as legal holds software and automated early case assessment further streamlines the process.

eGovernance provides a comprehensive eDiscovery solution to reduce discovery overhead and improve the speed and efficiency of managing requests across disparate systems. Our unique tools allow organizations to centralize eDiscovery. Whether legal counsel reviews data in place or extracts copies for more resilient retention requirements, the data stays secure.

Download Article PDF

The post Rise Above eDiscovery Challenges with Information Governance and Technology appeared first on eGovernance.

No matter how skilled, humans alone cannot effectively track, manage, and analyze massive stores of data to achieve compliance. Fortunately, continually evolving compliance technology fills the gap.

These intelligent compliance technologies deliver key benefits by automating processes, helping companies stay updated with regulatory changes and providing continuous monitoring. Powerful risk assessment tools can also identify and prioritize potential risks early, proactively applying necessary remediation measures.

Compliance Challenges Can Prove Costly

Organizations in highly regulated industries, such as healthcare, need to know where sensitive data lives and who has access to it. However, finding that data can prove difficult when it is stored across multiple platforms and storage locations. For instance, most organizations use a mix of on-premises and cloud environments, with potentially thousands of connected devices.

To successfully monitor sensitive information in this complex environment, data stewards need to classify the data. With huge amounts of data being created each day, manually locating and tagging sensitive data presents an insurmountable challenge. Organizations need a way to simplify the process and reduce the chance for human error.

Despite the challenges involved, non-compliance can result in significant consequences, including stiff fines and lost customers. Thus, compliance teams must have early notification of potential compliance issues. They also require the ability to clearly demonstrate compliance in case of an audit.

Automate Processes with AI

Because artificial intelligence (AI) can rapidly process massive amounts of data, it has become a critical component of compliance technology. AI tools save time, reduce errors, and enable early response by automating routine processes and analyzing data to highlight trends.

For instance, automating processes such as data classification and managing retention policies frees up resources and limits errors. Using pattern matching technology, AI tools can automatically recognize and tag sensitive data such as credit card information. Machine learning even allows tools to learn to identify certain types of information based on provided examples.

AI can also take the guesswork out of incorporating regulatory changes by helping organizations discover and interpret new regulations and updates. And AI tools can suggest necessary changes to policies and workflows.

Streamline Audits and Remediation

Compliance technology and AI play a key role in risk management. By automating compliance and security monitoring and analyzing patterns, advanced tools identify risks early. They then automatically send customized alerts to the right people.

For example, intelligent compliance tools deliver critical visibility into data across platforms. Once the system identifies sensitive data in unacceptable locations, it can easily remove or quarantine the information. Customizable reports demonstrate compliance and ensure that auditors and compliance officers receive the information they need daily.

eGovernance Delivers the Benefits of Compliance Technology

Tools like eGovernance provide organizations with the ability to view and manage sensitive data either manually or automatically from a single web portal. This includes streamlined data classification, automatic reports, and the ability to easily review and adjust access rights.

In addition, organizations can conduct internal investigations using powerful search capabilities. Because they can search all sources simultaneously, these digital compliance solutions allow auditors to drill down into specific compliance issues with no outsourcing.

Contact the information governance experts at eGovernance to achieve lower costs and reduced risk. They’ll help your compliance team simplify the process of achieving and maintaining regulatory compliance.

Download Article PDF

eGovernance Cloud Solutions

eGovernance is a Cloud based solution for preserving, discovering and accessing digital data within your email and document storage systems for compliance, audit, security, eDiscovery and warehousing of critical or older data.

Archiving »

eDiscovery »

Compliance »

Schedule Demo

Learn More

The post Reduced Risk and Lower Costs Highlight the Benefits of Compliance Technology appeared first on eGovernance.